on_her_korhal | Office Hours, Thursday

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Office Hours, Thursday

It was always lovely, the start of a new semester. So much potential. So many kids running around. And some of them were looking to her for guidance now - one of them for sure, though who knew what the next few weeks were going to bring.

Kerrigan, as a result, was not in a particularly terrible mood that day. She was sipping coffee in her office (though mostly for show) as she went through readings on her computer. Not that she hadn't been running analysis through River back home as it was, but it was almost comforting. Really.

Office hours were open. Kerrigan was present. And almost pleasant.

[[ open! ]]

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"So, control. The fire, I can either light a candle or make a medium sized building explode, or worse, but the small scale stuff doesn't bother me much. The...telekinesis, the heavier and bigger the object, the best. Something small like a tennis ball, I can lift, but chances are it will end up halfway inside a wall if I try to throw it." She took a moment to consider her words. Pretty accurate so far.

"The telepathy is the lamest one, besides the Push, which is like controlling someone's mind, but just by ordering them around. How do you learn control anyway? I can't go around reading minds and messing with brains for fun."

"You find someone willing to be your guinea pig, with the power to keep you from tearing their brains apart," she said, matter-of-factly, "Hell, try animals. And make sure you get the theory, first. You can practice on me if that'll be any help."

Not that Kerrigan would abuse it if she did. Really. "But telekinesis. Do bigger objects give you something more to 'hold on to' mentally, so to speak?"

"Uh, I guess I'll ask around. I don't really want to mess with your head, even when I'm sure you would be the one messing with my mind anyway." Because skill tended to beat raw power. "Animals? Now that...is a new one."

Charlie lifted a hand, although she didn't use her telekinesis. "I feel it...like a wave, so if I try to lift a paperclip, I'll get it alright, but also part pf the floor with it. It just...holds stuff, I guess. Or pushes, or crushes, but it's big by default."

"So you'd have to put in extra focus to make it smaller," she mused. "Decrease the amplitude of your wave, as it is... then the frequency. You don't need the same level of force for a paperclip as you'd need for the floor."

"My default range is bigger than anyone's default range, awesome." It meant she could toss a SUV at someone who pissed her off, but trying to reach her shoes with TK might end up with her ripping a wall from the dorms.

"That effort to reduce the area? It gives me headaches. Like trying to contain the water in the hose, but it keeps trying to get out." She liked that metaphor.

"Then the key is practice," Kerrigan said, simply.

She took a book off her desk, and got up. "Close the door."

She went and closed the door, feeling like she should be on the other side of it; she was still inside, though.

"Alright..."

"Now, in my office, you can throw a bit of weight around," she said, mildly, and tossed a pencil at the floor. "Anything you try to rip out, I can put back."

"Oh, damn." She wasn't expecting that, not right there. "If I rip your carpeting, it was all your fault." Not that Charlie would go all the way with her telekinesis, but she wasn't sure of just how powerful Kerrigan was.

Sighing, she focused on the pencil, and the pen alone. It wasn't going that well, of course, as she felt like she could perhaps lift the desk, too. Shorter, thought as she frowned. The pencil started to incline itself over a side, but Charlie felt how she was pulling the floor. "You could, perhaps, push down around the pencil? Unless you want to redecorate or something.

Kerrigan shot her a mildly irritated look. "Because I clearly hadn't thought of that myself," she drawled, as she lightly upped the pressure she'd been putting on it anyway.

And then a little more, increasing incrimentally to see how long it would take for Charlie to feel the difference.

Oddly enough, Charlie felt she could deal a lot better with Kerrigan like this. "You are clearly awesome, then", said between her teeth as she tried to lift the pencil.

It stood straight now, and Charlie could feel Kerrigan pushing down. Trying to lift it, though, was like trying to make something pass through an opening that was too small for it. Brow furrowing, Charlie tried to reduce the area, so she didn't struggle with the teacher's TK. It wasn't going that well.

"Keep trying."

Kerrigan had reached a level of force that seemed to work, so she was holding it, watchful for any increases or decreases of power on Charlie's end. "You have to start thinking of your power as malleable. It does not control you. You wield it."

Edited 2011-01-08 14:31 (UTC)

Charlie pushed up, and hit Kerrigan's shield. Still too big. Malleable, thought, and tried to imagine it as made of...rubber? No, too weak. Paper? Her mind was clearly giving her all the wrong answers. "Your...people teach your teeks and teeps how to use their powers since they are little, right?" She had grown used to do it all by ear.

Metal? Hot metal? She could deal with that. For a second, Kerrigan would feel how Charlie pushed at least twice as hard, and then, the pencil rose easily a couple of meters, and then fell back to the floor. Charlie took a hand to her head. "Ow."

"Hm," was all Kerrigan said, dropping her own excess power back to its stable minimum once she sensed that Charlie's TK had faded.

"And yes," she answered, after a moment of contemplating. "I was taken in for training at age eight. Of course, they also shot our brains full of machines to make sure we didn't get out of hand."

Hugging herself -although she didn't notice it right away- Charlie gave Kerrigan an apprenhensive look. "Back where I come from, there is an organization called the Shop. They...caused me to be like I am. It wasn't their first attempt to make super soldiers, and they didn't even did a thing to me, but to my parents...but I'm probably their first success, in a way."

She let Kerrigan draw her own conclusions about it.

"I killed my parents when my powers manifested," she answered, distantly. "Well, my mother. My father never recovered from the brain damage."

The advantage of being zerg: she could afford to care less than she once did. Kerrigan glanced down and met Charlie's eyes, though. "There will always be organisations trying to control you," she said, "That's why it's a good thing to make sure you can grind them down into the dust if they try."

Charlie didn't now if she should envy the easiness to speak of her teacher, but she would do, at least a little anyway.

"I've been killing them every time they catch up since I was ten, and they just keep coming. I suppose that if they do get me, they can find a way to make others like me." That was what probably freaked her out the most, the idea of others like her running around. "If I can learn...then I can come back and end them all for once." That would mean she could stop killing people. She was already fed up with it.

"Wipe them all out, take their research... that'll need a lot of preliminary planning. And allies. But in my experience, probably worth it."

She sounded almost like River, in the months leading up to-- well, anyway. "And trust me, if there's anyone who knows about getting fucked over by authority figures..."

Charlie sighed. "They will keep using people like lab rats. I'm the only person who can put them down." And she hated knowing that but it had been her dad's last will, and she would carry it on. Some time after she could harness her powers better.

Once there was a point, Charlie was...pretty easy to manipulate. Trust, in her opinion, made her weak, and her life experience showed that time and time again. And yet she was starting to see Kerrigan with other eyes. "I'll trust you, then. But what's in it for you?"

Trust was something that took time. It wasn't like Kerrigan hadn't learned all about that while playing the really big game. "Powers that Be back home never really gave me an instruction manual outside of the more lethal techniques they taught me. Working with kids like you helps me understand my own powers better in turn. Besides, there are some guys back home I never got to get payback to. Gives me a warm squishy feeling knowing I can help someone else manage it."

All the best lies were truths.

True lies tended to be the best arguments better; Charlie had used them more than once herself, so she could see...how Kerrigan was using it. And yet, it only made her more curious. Because Charlie could have been hardened due to living a harsh life, but she still cared, which in her opinion, never lead her somewhere good, but she couldn't help to want to know just how Kerrigan was where she was now.

Which meant she could stand her giving those reasons. "For payback then", said as she nodded. "Let's just avoid the warm squishy feelings."

"Good," she said, "I'm not a warm squishy person."

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Office Hours, Thursday

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