Passing Time

[conduit]

Rayen sat in the library, scuttled into a corner with a number of text books. She had stayed clear of any X-Men and most of the students, having garnered a reputation as the crazy girl who almost killer her brother, and then blew up like a bratwurst in a microwave a few weeks later.

So she put her nose in a few books, trying not only to find instances of soul travel, but buffing up her knowledge on electronics and the nature of electricity, just to see if she could help Forge with the "Device". Why he had to call it that, she didn't know, but it gave her the creeps. They were both technophiles, but Forge could get downright mad scientist about it sometimes.

[Domino]

Neena hadn't been able to find Rayen when she'd looked for her the day she'd been hurt; it had only been a matter of hours, but obviously Mr. Foley had been to her and healed her up enough in the lapse that she'd been able to emerge from the med-lab, which was the only place Neena had really checked. She didn't know where to begin, otherwise, and felt tracking her down more vigorously would seem a little strange.

It had niggled at her, though, the way other people's worries always had. She flipped through a German text in the library, down the language shelf and out of the main eye, not least because she looked semi-casual for once (jeans and an untucked button-down - it might look too hot to be borne, but even New York summers had nothing on Austin's). She didn't know whether she wanted to try picking up another language on top of everything else. She had her classes, of course, and the little bit of work she still did for various people in need of expert assistance, and she wanted to help out with the X-Men as well... and still stay sane.

German was an extremely uncouth language, she'd always felt.

Sighing, Neena reshelved the book. If it was meant to be, there would be a Sign. There always had been one before.

She began to leave the languages shelf, but instead of random dancing Germans, she found instead a few days' ago object - Rayen, deeply esconced in textbooks. Neena couldn't read the title, being behind Rayen, but some of the discarded ones looked somewhat suspect, though many were innocuous - electricity and electronics.

"Rayen?" she said, closing in on Rayen's corner and walking around where the girl - young woman, really - could see her without popping her neck.

"You look better," she said as pleasantly as possible. She did, too. Of course, the last time Neena had seen her, she'd been drenched in her own bodily fluids. "I went to med lab after the accident, but I think you'd already left. How are you feeling?"

[conduit]

Rayen lifted her head, but didn't smile. It wasn't that the woman was unwelcome, only that Rayen wasn't smiling a whole lot lately.

"Hey," she said quietly, hoping no one would take notice of the conversation, or the sound her name. Mojanes had taught her about the ways of Coyote, ways to hide, to sink into the things around you. She'd thought she'd hid well enough.

Apparently not.

"I'm... doing all right, all told." She glanced down at her books and closed them, stacking them up, turning the spines away from Neena. "Physically, fine. 'Lixer had me fixed up pretty quickly."

Rayen looked up at her, fixing her with a direct expression, calm, focused. It was kind of how Rayen had learned to deal with things she was unsure of. "I don't remember your name. You're Domino, right."

[Domino]

"That's good to hear," Neena said, "but how are you?"

There was a difference, at least for her, between being fine and being... fine. Fine in a different sense.

Fine was an odd word to use, anyway, wasn't it? Every other language used variations of 'good,' which was vague enough, but 'fine' had once meant expensive, or exquisitely detailed until it became expensive, or well-made -

She should probably keep the tangents to a minimum. It wasn't that she couldn't pay attention to two things at once; she just thought any wandering telepaths might wonder about how seriously she took near-deaths.

All things considered, though, they were still terrifying, but... well. There were only so many times you could be really terrified.

Rayen was looking at her with a quiet certainty that bespoke a certain, level-headedness, a quality naturally hot-headed Neena had always admired, as well as maturity beyond her years - how far beyond she didn't know. She didn't know how she felt about anyone being too far ahead of themselves. There was almost always a reason for it.

:I don't remember your name. You're Domino, right."

"It's - yes," she said. Going by a pseudonym - not a nickname now, but an alias - was throwing her off. "But it's Neena, too. And you're... I'm sorry, I really can't get a handle on two names for every person. I can usually barely hold onto one."

[conduit]

She made a face and looked down. "Yeah... only gets worse when you have four." She smirked.

"Call me Rayen, it's a Rayen kind of day. Have a seat." She gestured to the chair across the table from her.

"It's nice of you to inquire," she said. "But we don't know each other that well." Rayen pulled long strands of black-brown hair behind her ear, and looked out the window for a second.

"Just shy of insane, does that explain it?" She smirked. "The only reason I haven't taken a gun to my mouth yet is my brother. I don't think he'd be able to deal with it if I killed myself. But... he might have to, if I can't figure something out soon."

"Either that or I give myself to Coyote and go live in the mountains on the rez until I die of exposure. Cheers." She gestured the bottle of soda in her hand at Domino, and let a little of the despondent feeling she'd been hiding slip out in her flat expression.

"Sorry if that's not what you wanted to hear."

[Domino]

A part of Neena wanted to giggle guiltily at the bitter joke - the part of her that had been 15 since she was about 12. She managed to restrain it, instead sliding into the chair across the table from Rayen, crossing her legs and leaning her weight on one side.

"Sorry to pry," she said. "My dad just always - you should notice when someone gets hurt. We're too familiar where I'm from."

Not a normal problem for her, except the overcuriosity. She hoped Rayen wouldn't be as offended as some would be.

However, as she spoke, it seemed like she was in a place where offense didn't really touch. Neena's interested face faded into worry. She wondered, morbidly, if Rayen's urge to kill herself was based more in hatred for Lorna's presence or the pain of having to live with another person in your head. She could fully understand the former - but she'd never understood the latter.

"That's... no, not really," she said honestly. "More of what I expected, but - wow. That's thoughtful of you, I suppose."

Just shy of insane indeed.

"You don't think he'll be able to get her out?" Neena asked, twisting the gold class ring on her right ring finger, the only color on her until her eyes or her jeans, depending on which direction you went. She decided it would probably be bad to ask for an explanation of what exactly Coyote was; some kind of god-figure, she imagined, and that was really all she needed to know for purposes not founded in simple curiosity. "Or that she might leave voluntarily? There have to be coma victims around."

[conduit]

Rayen half smiled. "I think if she could have gotten out of here a few weeks ago, she would have."

"And can you imagine the ethical debacle we'd get in if she hijacked some coma victim's body? You're starting to sound like my brother." She almost smiled.

"But... there has to be a way. If we knew a little more about how it happened, we could try to reverse it, but... I don't know." She shook her head.

"I might have ot take off for a while. Do some hard thinking. I DO think... it can be done. I'm just not sure if Bandero can do it."

[Domino]

Neena shrugged, though with enough of a smile to show she wasn't completely serious about hijacking a coma victim... well, one that was going to wake up, anyway.

"Maybe she was scared of being bodiless," she suggested. "I would be. But how did she even get in there?"

It might be her natural expectation of the worst possible cause for every effect, or it might be that she'd never known Lorna to be able to say if the person in Rayen's head was really her, but she couldn't shake the idea that Rayen might have created Lorna herself. Maybe they were close before Lorna died, and it was her insane way of dealing with the grief, and Forge's insane way of dealing with his sister being crazy...? There had to be a way to tell something like that. But even though MPD was rare, it had to be less rare than psychic cohabitation.

"It might be for the best to leave for a while," she said. "Clear your head. One of those things, I guess, if it's going to get done, you've got to do it yourself... I sound like you're grouting a bathroom. I'm sorry."

[conduit]

Rayen actually chuckled then, running a finger back and forth over an eyebrow. “It’s about as entertaining, that’s for sure.”



Clearing her throat, she was actually rather glad to talk to someone about what she thought had happened. Two heads were better than one, and Bandero seemed to really respect this woman’s knowledge. It wasn’t the same as her own, but maybe that would be a benefit.



“Lorna had some kind of electromagnetic ability, apparently. I’d never met her, so I’ve never seen it used. She was attacked, on the school grounds. Lorna told me she sent out some kind of impulse just as he killed her, and felt herself pulled out of her own body and kind of suspended in the electromagnetic sphere she’d created around her body. The guy thought she was dead- and well, for all intents and purposes she was. She told me, she didn’t have any consciousness while she was outside her body, right…”



Rayen was drawing the idea of what she was saying on the tabletop with a finger. Her love and fascination for all things scientific was obvious in how she seemed to almost forget the horror of her situation while trying to explain the technicalities.



“Now I have a certain connection with electricity. I can sense the grid in this building, and when there’s a charge that’s particularly strong, I’ll be able to pick up its presence if it’s nearby. I kept feeling something coming from the area where she’d been killed, and went to check it out.”

Rayen shook her head. “The second I walked over where her body had been, I was knocked out. I don’t remember a whole lot other than a really sharp pain in my torso, like… being inflated from the inside. I woke up in the med lab.” She shrugged, and cleared her throat. “And Lorna was there.”



She looked at Neena. “I think this was a one in a billion chance. I’m a conduit for electricity. She had somehow transferred her soul into an electro-magnetic medium, not surprising given her mutation. I think my ability found hers. Like opposite charges.”

[Domino]

Neena's mind did its characteristic breakdown as Rayen spoke, images in her head forming, dissolving and reforming in different shapes against a gridded background, a tickertape of numbers and half-formed words and ideas running underneath it.

Electromagnets were magnets powered, obviously, by electricity. She'd made a motor powered by one in high school physics. Lorna could probably move metal the way Magneto could, but the source of her power would be electric - she'd pushed power out of herself as she was attacked, probably a lot of it, since it was in a moment of panic. Not a soul, but something that could hold it, if Neena believed in that kind of thing. And Rayen could feel the leftover power the way she could feel the grid in the building, so she'd gone to investigate... and for some reason, the haze of power and soul - if Neena believed in souls being more than consciousness, of course, which for the intents of the conversation seemed the best road to take - hadn't dissipated into a conductor. Maybe the soul in it made it nonreactive.

But even if a soul wouldn't follow the path of normal electricity, if appeared to like Rayen well enough - her own consciousness might make her a more suitable conductor than the nearest body of water or metal. On that count, she should be imbued with Lorna's powers as well as her consciousness - or her body was. Rayen herself, the hive of power seated in the brain that distinguished her from the brain matter itself, was still a separate entity, or at least appeared to be, from the separate hive that was Lorna and her powers, since the eletromagnetic field and her soul seemed irrevocably linked.

It was completely fascinating. She was sucked into problems easily, and after a while you got used to the idea of another presence in one person's head. It was just another kink in the wire.

She looked at Neena. “I think this was a one in a billion chance. I’m a conduit for electricity. She had somehow transferred her soul into an electro-magnetic medium, not surprising given her mutation. I think my ability found hers. Like opposite charges.”

"I'm not sure if it was that strange," she said contemplatively. "Well... in a manner of speaking, of course it was. But if she's a charge and you're a conductor, where else was she going to go? Especially as it sounds like she's not strictly electrical, or wasn't, before - otherwise, shouldn't she have leapt into the closest thing instead of waiting for you to come by? Maybe a human body is sort of like a conductor for the soul. She needed both a body and a traditional conductor for both sides of whatever was floating above her body."

Which meant it really was one in a billion - a perfectly matched and nearly inevitable one in a billion. The real chance was their both being in the same place at the same time.

"So you'd need to transfer her to something else or separate her consciousness from her power. She might be little more than a metaphysical electromagnet. Her soul's stuck to you, but only until you shut off the current that's powering it."

Of course, the ramifications of something like that were grisly - not literally, but in the end, couldn't it amount to murder? Besides, she wasn't sure how you'd do it in the first place, so it was a moot point. The only other option was transfer. But how did you transfer a possibly-gigantic electric charge from the only conductor that seemed to suit it? The best option would be to find another conductor, maybe another mutant who could manipulate electricity or one who could adopt Rayen's powers for a time, but then Lorna would be stuck in that mutant's head. That could be why Lorna couldn't leave - she couldn't find anywhere to go but free space.

Unless, that is, they built her somewhere.

"I wonder if he could recreate the situation," she said, referring to Rayen's brother, who in Neena's head was a sort of anomaly-person that could just build anything if you gave him enough scrap metal. "Not expel Lorna - or you - from the original conductor, but build a new conductor... see if she makes the leap."

[conduit]

She seemed to understand exactly what Rayen had been saying- which delighted her to no end.

"Yeah. Which is exactly what we've been trying to do. But you still don't seem to get the reason, at least under this theory, why Lorna ended up in me- she didn't go into just anything, because nothing else in the vicinity had the capacity to take anything else in. She was in the woods, quite a way from the building. Wood isn't conductive, neither were the plants. And there were plenty of people around after she left her body- not only Logan, Bandero, Bishop- but the medics and the police officers afterward. It's my nature that even made it possible. It's my thought she may have lingered there until either the charge wore out, as it had nothing to contain it, or somehow been held there inevitably. It could be the area had some sort of geologic capacity to hold that particular magnetic field." Rayen shrugged.

"So the 'device' was set up by Bandero to create the most likely environment in which Lorna could not only transfer out of my body based on the nature of my mutation, but one into which she could be transferred and not necessarily... well. Dissipate." She said it was the same tone as one might say 'die', which is exactly what she meant.

"The device ran a current through the grips you saw me holding onto. I think the problem came along when Bandero didn't account for the fact that I am a Conduit- the current passing in wasn't enough. I couldn't just ground that wattage in the machine again. Well- I could, but Lorna couldn't follow. He'd set up a capacitor, and I think that was supposed to transfer Lorna- which would be, theoretically, a different material than the electronic charge- but I think he underestimated one thing."

She took a breath, half smiling at how wordy the entire situation was. "Every time I have tried to use my ability consciously since Lorna joined me, Lorna's own power has interfered, but not in any concrete way we're able to establish a method for. It's almost as if both our powers activate simultaneously and go haywire. When Bandero had his leg fixed, I was supposed to go in and guide some pulses through the veins in his legs to the wires in the prosthetic, but I ended up electrocuting him, and pulling half the lab across the room to me. And when he had me in the device, I believe her power interfered there as well."

"I believe Lorna's ability to create magnetic fields scatters any electricity I pull through me. It's like a displacement current, it... scatters. Sometimes it's focused, if I have another conduit around me, which is what the device became."

Rayen touched the table with her pointer finger, talking a little softer. "But I felt Lorna leaving me, just like I'd felt her join me, right before I lost consciousness in the machine. I think Bandero was almost there. I think the reason I burst the way I did was the force of her field attempting to separate from my electric field. Bandero and I's physiology works a touch differently when it comes to electricity, so I think it's possible that if she were in another mutant or a human, she'd have been able to leave more easily, or may not have been trapped at all. But because of the way our mutations correspond, she's having a more difficult time leaving."

"So of course that raises the question- how is Lorna independently maintaining a mutation that's supposedly based on our DNA-" Rayen waved the thought away. "Fascinating, but not really applicable. As much as I'd like to donate myself to science as a case study, I'd rather have Lorna out of me." Rayen smirked.

"I think we have a good chance of altering the device slightly. I just think... it's going to take time. I'm not going to be willing to jump back in the machine until I'm pretty damned sure both Lorna and I will be safe."

[Domino]

The whole situation just broke so many scientific laws. Neena leaned her chin on her hand, her elbow on the table between them, as Rayen spoke, absorbing as much as possible while the hamster wheels in her head spun furiously.

She couldn't help thinking, though, that if both of their powers scattered the other, and Rayen's power needed to be in use to get Lorna out of her head... that Lorna might be stuck. Or at least that removing her with that kind of interference might do more harm than good, leave one or both of them a vegetable.

"There might not be a way to make it completely safe," she said. "Running a current through two melded mutants whose powers each disrupt the other's doesn't sound like it could ever be completely safe. I'll try to lend you some luck in future, but you saw how well it worked last time."

Of course, even luck didn't help when a situation had no possible outcome other than what simply had to happen. And Rayen had survived - intact, too. That in and of itself was incredible. The Device working then had been too much to ask, given Rayen's explanation.

"What are you going to do in the meantime? Some of it might be psychological, especially if what's essentially brainpower and not much else is holding a mutation, or however it is she's working."

[conduit]

"That's what I think may be the key... or something like it." She sighed, and shook her head a bit. "And we should have thought of it before, but my brother has even less inclination to consider the spiritual than I do. Given our background, I guess that makes sense."

Rayen tugged hair behind her ear again. "I'm thinking of going back to the reservation. Our uncle lives there, it's where I lived for 7 years before accepting the offer from the Professor Xavier. I think I need to do some hard thinking."

"Specifically, I think it's time for a vision quest." She looked the woman over. "You're not blood, Bandero'd likely have said something. Do you know what a vision quest is?"

[Domino]

A vision quest; how... not Hollywood. But dramatic. Not misplaced drama, certainly, not even amusing drama, but Neena took little stock with any cures that weren't 'pull my head out of my ass' or 'drink until it goes away.' Of course, things in her world were, generally speaking, very clear-cut. There was no call for a vision quest, nor had there ever been.

"Why? Do I look like blood?" she asked with an amused arch of her delicate Anglo-Saxon eyebrow, a smile twitching at her small, plump Anglo-Saxon mouth - of course, her stark skin could've covered any natural shade from the pink-white that had been her mother's (and, she thought, was probably hers too... somewhere down there) to a deep African blackness, but her features themselves were straightforwardly English, in perfect proportion, and about as exotic as an orthopedic shoe. Personally, she preferred Rayen's vaguely Asiatic features (or Forge's more native ones, for that matter), simply because her English lineage was boring, and she looked that way. Pretty, but boring. Like a kitchen garden. Of course, the patch made up for any lack of interest, but the patch still wasn't what she thought Rayen referred to as blood. "I've got Comanche in me somewhere on my dad's side, but it's something ridiculous like eight generations back, so I don't think that counts."

"I sort of generally know... it's a quest for a vision, isn't it? One wanders forth into the wilderness and abstains from everything until truths reveal themselves? Bear in mind that everything I know comes from the History Channel on this one."

[forge]

Was it an invasion of privacy for Forge to use cameras in the school to monitor the goings on? He let that debate fall into the hands of people who gave a shit, who's mighty numbers did not include him. This way left it more convenient when it came to things like finding his sister (who was talking in the library to Domino,) not to mention made the school a crapload safer.

It didn't take him long to work his way to the Library, dressed in his overalls with the top down, arms tied around his waist. He had a black Thundercats T-shirt on underneath. As usual, his goggles were pulled up over his brow, and when he walked there was the faintest hint of a limp.

He strode to where they sat, and nodded to them as he pulled up a chair.

“Hey guys, I hate to interrupt... but I think I've come to an interesting conclusion regarding Lorna.” His face carried troubles that aged it, and his eyes had a sadness to them. “I'm pretty certain that... uhh... I've been a retard this entire time. I've been hubris... hubraic? Hubritic?... and arrogant, and I think I could've gotten you killed, Ray. I think that the answer to getting this to work isn't in The Device. It's with you two.”

[conduit]

Rayen smiled a bit as her brother entered, and held up a finger to let Domino know her question hadn't been forgotten. LIstening to Forge, she smirked, and nodded.

"Apt time for you to join us, Bandy..." Was her brother actually saying out loud, by the way, it couldn't possibly have been my fault, it had to be yours? He didn't have an output for her energy, completely disregarded either Lorna or Rayen's mutation. Given, Rayen was the one that walked into the machine on trust, and she really should have double checked Bandero's work. Not because he was an idiot, but because that's just what you do before you put yourself in a machine and let someone turn it on.

But she'd relied on Bandero's technical skill. She'd felt it was worthy of her absolute faith. Apparently, so did he. Even after his experiment failed.

Rayen gave him a bit of a look. "I was just telling Neena..." she said a bit slowly, "I'm likely going back to the rez for a while. Going to talk to Mohanes. But I don't think this is purely spiritual, Bandero. It doesn't add up. This wouldn't have happened to anyone else."

[forge]

“In one sense, no, it's not, but in another it sort of is. Mutant powers eventually always break down to a level where no definable science can answer them... there's no road-map for how they work. Sure, there's the basic sciences of what they do ... but even that's really basic. We know of course, that Lorna's power and yours combined in a way to make this situation possible. Yes, I agree with that, it wouldn't have happened with people who didn't have those powers... but beyond that?”

Forge leaned in closer, looking around as if what he was saying was blasphemy, and lowered his voice.

“I mean, for the love of God, Neena here controls Luck. There may have been the vaguest notion of science somewhere in the beginning. Sure, DNA, the X-Gene, all of that... but ultimately, once the mutant power manifests, everything else becomes nearly supernatural. Definable by modern science by a very narrow margin, and often not at all. There's little logic in them. In fact, the human will has a great amount of control over the power a mutant has. If it were less supernatural, the power would be more flat, less varied. In this circumstance I'm just saying that technology is an unreliable way to help you. I've tried to measure out, to quantify, your 'soul' versus 'Lorna's soul'. I can't. I went through and re-read my data a million times... your signatures are completely one signature. I've been wrapping my mind around trying to build a machine that can separate the two, and I've come up empty.”

He leaned back finally, scratching his cheek.

“So I asked myself... how would I solve this if it were two other people. Well, the answer would have been obvious: I'd go get Rayen and Polaris, and we'd figure out a way to use their powers to draw the signature out. Because often, it takes other mutant powers to un-muddle mutant powers. It's like, magic. Only magic can affect other magic. You can't fight a Golem unless you have a +3 weapon or better. So what should we do in this circumstance? The same thing. We should get Conduit and Polaris, and see if we can't come up with a way to will the signatures separate, using their powers. The Device might as well be a couple of copper wires that leads to the box that should hold Lorna. Sure, it's handy to have there as a tool to help – but it's not really the answer to the problem.”

[conduit]

Rayen thought about what her brother had said, and nodded. She didn't entirely agree, but was just a little too tired to argue 'technology and science isn't the opposite of the supernatural' with a guy who, two days ago, would have argued it for her and insisted everything he'd just said was entirely off base.

He was questioning himself on her behalf. Sweet, but kind of scary at the same time.

"Right... but you know Bandero, I don't think we're going to end up with an answer, either way." Her voice seemed to fall a bit, to lose power. The hope she was clinging to seemed to be mostly for the sake of itself, and that became clear in her tone.

"If we can seperate at all, it's going to be a fluke, and we're not likely to ever understand how it happened."

[Domino]

And then Forge appeared out of the ether.

Neena had a feeling he did that a lot.

She hadn't known him long enough to know whether the charges of hubris, arrogance, and stupid pride were truer than one could expect of a) a tech-head or b) a member of the male species, but if he was confessing it, she wondered how much of a problem it really was. However, it did show a level of personal awareness that she had to respect, even if she couldn't respect the problems behind it.

She also wondered which two he was talking about, since technically, there were three people present. She also didn't know what a golem was or how a sword could be plus anything, but she assumed it was a technical term. She'd have to look it up online later.

But at Rayen's tone, she felt she had to speak up.

"Well," she said, "Don't give up on it yet. Even if it's by definition not understandable, it sounds like we've got the start of a solid theory, and bear in mind that you've got a good chance on a fluke if I'm around. I can't really control it, per se, but... well. If you figure out any way to pull apart, even in your own head, I could try my best."

[conduit]

Rayen looked at Neena for a moment. She’d just said we in a way that indicated she was fully into figuring out this problem. It made Rayen’s half smile a little warmer. It really wasn’t her place or her obligation to give two shits about Rayen, Lorna, or Bandero for that matter- though she was pretty sure it was Forge’s involvement that had the pretty, if unorthodox looking woman lingering.

And she had a really valid point. Rayen and Lorna had done so much fighting and struggling, they hadn’t really taken time to experiment with their own situation. Could they somehow exercise independence, thereby increasing the likelihood of a physical separation?

“You know… you might be right. What if Lorna and I practiced, say… each operating a different hand? Each taking a portion of my physical form. It could be that my brain simply doesn’t have the capacity to handle two separate sets of controls, and that’s why only Lorna or I can control my body at any given time. But our powers activate simultaneously whether we want them to or not… so obviously, there’s some division somewhere, the two functions behave completely differently.” Rayen ran her fingers through her hair and looked at both of them.

“It certainly couldn’t hurt.” Rayen looked almost excited at the prospect of some kind of progress in her situation, however minor.