Office Hours, Thursday

[on_her_korhal]

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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[pyromanyac.livejournal.com]

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."

[on-her-korhal.livejournal.com]

"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."

[pyromanyac.livejournal.com]

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.

[on-her-korhal.livejournal.com]

"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."

[pyromanyac.livejournal.com]

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.

[on-her-korhal.livejournal.com]

"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..."

[pyromanyac.livejournal.com]

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?"

[on-her-korhal.livejournal.com]

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.

[pyromanyac.livejournal.com]

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."

[on-her-korhal.livejournal.com]

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