alderwitch

"Oops! Sorry" Her concentration shattered, all the clothes thumped softly to the ground around them and Alex surveyed the mess with an amused look, "I think I am having a moment. Mark asked me out, and I said yes, but it's tomorrow and I have no idea what I should wear. He said something red." She gestured, scrunching her face up as she focused and the clothes began to refold themselves and settle neatly back onto their shelves.

OOC, same day as the Colors thread. The day before Mark and Alex's date.

Alex's side of the room for once was a mess as she had pulled out all of her clothes and set them out to look at them. Actually, it looked something like a scene out of a fairy tale as she was perched on the edges of her desk and her telekinetic powers flew clothes back and forth in different combinations as she tried to figure out what exactly she was going to wear for her date with Mark. Alex wasn't a clothes-horse by any stretch of the imagination but her parents had always provided more than any child needed at birthdays and holidays. For all of her choices, Alex didn't have a clue what she was going to wear. "No, no, no..." She gestured and the most recent possibility landed gently back in her bed in a rather neat pile of discards and she lifted up a few more shirts and bottoms.

"Me too. But with my luck, I doubt it," Taylor returned the smile then impulsively scribbled down a number which she handed to Stesha, "Here's my cell, although I may be out of range, I check the messages pretty regularly. You're welcome to call for whatever." She added the last with slight rustiness. It had been a while since Taylor'd made any friends, much less any she had anything in common with. Taylor glanced around the area, trying to figure out where to wander off to teleport out of the area. The only person in the area was Stesha. Taylor gave her a small salute with two fingers off her temple then stepped back out of view of the direct path and blipped out of exisistance, and off to the next errand on her list, mulling over everything that Stesha had to say.

"I've considered it," Taylor said honestly as she stood up and brushed crumbs off her lap, "And I probably should. School just mattered so much to me once. I should fly through. I speak a half a dozen languages. I guess, I just want something that Taylor does without the help of her alter-ego. I bet a good shrink could probably spend days on that." She shrugged and smiled and held her hand out to shake Stesha's, "Email would be great. It was really nice to meet you, Stesha. Hopefully we'll see each other around. Don't hesitate to call if you have imp problems."

Taylor accepted the half a cookie with a bemused look, "I am supposed to be keeping a balance, although I think its more of a cosmic balance than a personal life balance technically." Nibbling on the cookie, she crossed her legs and lifted her face to the sunlight with a contented sigh. "I think you do have this pressing guilt if you take time for yourself. A few weeks ago, I did something I never do. I took someone to see a different world. Not because there was a threat or we were needed. Just because he did something kind for me and I wanted to return the favor. Share some of the wonder for once, rather than the problems." Sighing, she shook herself and took another bite, "Except my breaks are usually taken up working a day job or with school. I think it'll be better if I can just pass my classes and put college behind me it will all be less insane. Thank you for the cookie."

"Wel..." Taylor considered the question and then shrugged, "No. I mean, I live alone and I get so busy that it never seems to make sense to take the time to eat since there isn't a need to anymore. I mean, I look normal but I can handle deep space just like this and a good half the time I'm intangible. If it makes you feel better, I eat pretty much nothing but when I'm doing a social thing and I'm the exact same weight I was when I got impowered. I don't know if that's better or worse to hear." She smiled and shrugged, "I don't do a lot of things just for fun anymore, though. I keep telling myself, I'll have time later and then something comes up. You know how it goes."

Taylor replaced the necklace over her head carefully, settling it in the usual resting place at her throat, "My uncle made me swear to protect it but I don't think even he was aware of its actual potential." She brightened at the mention of lack of eating and asked with carefully restrained curiosity, "How do you handle eating in social situations? I don't need to eat either, and I find I have to pay attention to it a lot more or I'll accidentally eat way too much or way too little. I'm sorry if thats a weird question, I just don't find people who have had a major physiological shift that try and do the secret identity thing."

'There wasn't any 'post hypnotic' thing. I would have noticed a 'post hypnotic' thing. Why? What's going on?' Alex's thoughts filtered through their mental link as if she was slightly distracted. In her room, Alex looked up from her clothes and focused more on the boys. She rummaged around through Mike's recent memories to answer her own question, then her voice was tinged with amusement, 'Chris just thinks you're being too glum. He's not mentally controlled.'

"I'm pretty sure I have way more enemies than friends unfortunately," Taylor said dryly, still amused by the mental image of the bridal wars. "I'm not sure that an invasion and subsequent brawl is a little quirk but it would certainly be an ice breaker for the families." She nodded at Stesha's hasty assurances. Taylor didn't doubt the floral talents of the company in the slightest and her expression said as much. "Linguistics. I've always had a gift for them. It's actually how I got into this in the first place." Carefully, Taylor lifted the amulet from around her neck and flipped it over in her palm to show the delicate script running around the edges of the amulet. "It's Atlantean. The necklace is called the Eye of Heshem. The inscription reads 'To every light, a darkness. To every darkness, light. The balance shall be kept'. Or at least that's a close enough translation. It's an oath that I happened to read aloud and voila, interdimensional guardian."

Taylor blushed, glancing down at her linked hands before she looked back up with a chuckle, "Oh, ah, that's not needed. No reason to give my family false hope after all. It's not like I have an active social life, or anything. I don't think that I'm the marrying type anyways. Besides, can't you just see mid-wedding an entire imp invasion." She laughed and pointed her finger like a gun off to the side, "Nothing goes with eldritch lightning. And the safety deposit would be through the roof!"

Taylor smiled a little sadly and nodded, "I know exactly what you mean. The secret identity thing is not the easiest thing in the world." She glanced down at the page, trying to picture the church with the flowers she was suggesting, "That sounds classy, and there's certain to be some bumping into the flowers if I remember my last family wedding correctly. With all those people trying to get seated, it can be a little hectic, and the whole familys in the wedding." Sitting back, Taylor tucked her hands in her lap and lifted one shoulder, "It's hard, and I think I mess up more often than not. I had to call one of my teammates to help cover last month because I spent four days in another world instead of one, but they're too important to me not to try. Taylor only has school to worry about, so she should have plenty of time but being Phantom takes large chunks out of it."

"Okay, I think I'm going to curl up with a book for a bit. Let my big ol' brain shut off. If you need help with history later, lemme know. I can give you the cliff notes version, just this once." Alex gave her a little grin as she headed into the doorm room. Cliff notes version likely being a rapid download of the history chapters from the total recall psychic. "Feel better, Erin."

"That actually sounds like a really selfless use of your talents. You don't have to go looking for trouble to be a super-hero. At least, that's not in any manual I've ever read," Taylor joked as Stesha found her card, "With your powers, you can probably do a lot more good than most of us. I, for example can blast something to smithereens with eldritch lightning. I can't, however, help set up sustainable gardens at homeless shelters. Or help make barren land fallow. Maybe its all the rest of us that just have a limited set of abilities so we have to confine ourselves to thumping thugs rather than doing civic works." She shrugged slightly and glanced down at the books once more. "The actiony things just get more news coverage, I think."

Phantom: (Post Count: 264) Wedding Fever (25) Vaster than Empires and More Slow (1) A Desperate Affair (33) Manic Mondays (4) A Massive Explosion in Riverside (4) Checkmate (4) The New Man (33) Assault on Precinct 13 (2) Trickster's Game (2) Picking Up the Trash (18) My Fair Lady (31) Holding Out for a Hero (12) An Evening of Blood and Thunder (34) An Explanation of Sorts (16) Nighttime Networking (11) Duty and Drive (4) Clash on the Back Nine (14) Hammer and Anvil (13) On this the Day of my Daughter's Debut (5) Explanations, Take Two (8) Psyche: (Closed threads: 189) Schoolyard Brawl (17) Colors Out of Space (7) The Other Goods (19) D(ate) Day (28) Sweet Sixteen (13) A Three Hour Tour (1) Birthday at the Park (20) String and Tin Cans (16) Daikaiju Days (16) Great Minds Think Alike (4) Braniacs of Freedom 2.0 (3) Postgame Analysis (30) Car Shopping (15) The One The Only (GM, no PC) (5) (Go ahead and add this to Psyche's total)

"I can tell you for a fact that Mike holds no one else to the standards that he holds himself to. He's terrified you'll end up eaten alive with the guilt he has which is what's motivating him. It isn't that he thinks you're a bad person cuz he really wouldn't talk to you about it at all if he did. Once he gets past his own baggage, he's going to have a lot of empathy but right now he's a dumb boy that says dumb boy things, but you should know that it's motivated out of friendship. He can't think of anything worse than his experience and doesn't want it for anyone. Mike has trouble getting out of his own head on things," One of Alex's shoulders kicked up. "If someone else made a mistake, he'd be the first person there to try and help them live through it. He might not be very good at it, but he'd try." "Someday he's gonna have to stop running and when he does, he'll be a vastly different person, but I agree with you on the other opponents for a bit."

Taylor nodded her agreement and relaxed into the bench before she asked curiously, "Can I ask what you do? I don't actually meet that many other supers. There's the Knights who I work with and know. There's a handful of others but most of the time, I'm off doing my own thing. I can tell that you've got plant based powers but that's really about it."

"Some people have described it as such," Taylor said, a reluctant smile kicking up one edge of her mouth and revealing a dimple in her cheek, "Okay, how do I explain it... So in addition to this world and dimension, there are any infinate numbers of other ones. Some very similar to ours, and some completely alien. There are things that keep the big powers, like things we'd call gods or demons in their own homes but there's not so much restriction on the lower end stuff. So I put things back where they belong as a very, very simplistic explanation. There's just me doing it. It's not like a cop force, just one imbued individual." She frowned at the memory of the imp, her gaze shifting down, "I don't know what that thing wanted. It may have been looking for me for something else. I anger a lot of very powerful beings with my work. There are all sorts of things that want to meddle in this world especially. It's really not so very different in action than most super-heroing. I just have a different stomping ground and more rules."

Alex regained control over herself but not without some effort. There was the faintest sparkle of tears in her eyes when she looked down, but she'd recovered despite the slightly hoarse quality to her voice when she spoke again, "No, in that you're completely right. Most people are never going to look for anything past the capes and the uniform. They'll go back to their own lives and we'll all have one more bad dream. One more memory that haunts us. No one will thank us when we're half a second too late, and only we will have to live with that. I like to think thats what really makes us heroes. Not the saving people, but the price we pay out of ourselves to do it." She closed the distance, not touching Erin but closing the gap, her voice sad and a little weary, "Its why we have to care about each other. Because at the end of the day, that's all we have. We're the only people that can come close to understanding each other, and why we each do this. That's all my point was. We won't like each other's opinions. Or even agree. But we have to care, because in the end there's no one else that will."

"In a way, yes." Taylor said hesitantly, reluctant to lie but also reluctant to enduce weeping or shouting. She eased herself down on the bench and crossed her legs. "Let me see if I can explain better. I can cast magic... let's call it a spell. It will tell me within about two hundred miles of every single episode of paranormal activity and the details of all such events. That I have to cast. I also have a second sight type of sense that, ah, tingles when there's active magic but it would only tell me there was something magical in the area. Not anything more than that there was a presence. So no, I couldn't tell just by looking. Does that help?"

"Oh, I don't?" Alex said, following, her tone at least somewhat irritated now before she smoothed it back into her usual voice, "Why don't you ask me then? Ask me why I talk like a psychologist? Why don't you ask me what it was like being unable to keep my thoughts in my own head? Why don't you ask me why I can share your nightmares and not wake up screaming?" If Erin wanted irritated sixteen year old girl, that's what she now had talking to her. Albiet, still in a calm steady voice, "If you want to talk about me, lets talk about the time I got sucked into nice Mr. Gibbins head down the streat as he beat his wife senseless. I was six. Let's talk about the nightmares of the neighbor three blocks down who had flash back to his families death during the Terminus invasion. Let's talk about the first time I had to rip my mind away from someone as they died in a twisted metal car accident. It was Lucy Pickens. She was twenty-three. Her three year old son watched. That was all before I was ten years old. I have perfect recall. I remember everything." Alex stopped walking, her voice tremoring before she smoothed it out, "You want to talk about therapists. I've had ten years of therapy. Every day. That's who my teachers were in the government program I was in. Day in and day out talking about everything I could see or hear or think. So, no, while I can understand where you're coming from, I can't feel the exact emotions unless I'm in them at the moment but have you even thought about what my life has been like. Have you even tried?"

Taylor started then quickly stepped in to make somewhat frantic flapping motions with her hands, "It's okay, it's okay. I'm not normal." She visibally winced. This was going on the list with the cats with moments of her super hero career. Trying to will the woman with her mind not to burst into tears she explained, "I'm a mystic. I detect things. Like magical things or dimensional anomolies. It's one more sense that I have. Then when the imps showed up, I cast a spell to see if there was anything else and it told me about your abilities. I can't tell just by looking with my eyes. I just happen to have super-sense that detect magic. I'm not about to tell anyone. I mean, you know my secret identity. You even have my mom's phone number and address." Taylor spoke quickly, her voice low and pitched not to carry as she tried to soothe the woman. She really, really wished she was better at soothing at this particular moment.

"There's more than two sides to this, Erin. You're not asking me for what my opionion is. You're telling me what you want it to be." Alex said it gently, "I don't thing anyone's ever ready to be a hero. You both have been heroes at different times in your life. If you want to talk about what I think of both of you, I'm happy to do so but I think you'd rather I listen to your feelings than talk about mine. Which is okay. I'm happy to do that." "What I think the point is, is that you're very good at dealing with a life or death situation. You've been a soldier in a fight for a big part of your life, but you have options here that you're not used to having. You have choices that weren't choices before. Running away IS an option. It wasn't for you, and I think you're probably mad that it was for him." Alex said thoughtfully, "I mean, I know its hard not to resent that everyone has easier lives than yours, but it doesn't mean that we haven't had bad things happen at some point too. Not on the same scale, but, I mean not all of us have had Mark's existance either. Its okay, you know, to be mad at me or Mike for having things easier."

That actually startled a laugh out of Taylor and she shook her head firmly, "No, and they haven't a clue about my abilities. They really are all right-brained scientist types. Having one of the premier mystics in the city in their family would cause my world to implode inward on itself." "What about you? Are your abilities hereditary?" Taylor asked curiously, "Like, neo-dryads or something?" She followed along in Stesha's wake, taking long steps for her size. Her hat brim shaded her face and she reached up to adjust the angle against the sun as they headed out to wherever Stesha was leading them. Inwardly, Taylor was silently thanking the powers that be that she wasn't having to deal with a hysterical florist frantically calling her mother to cancel based on act of demon.

"I'm not on anyone's side. I would hope you'd know that by now!" Alex said earnestly, her hands coming up to gesture, "I love Mike. He's my best friend. That doesn't make him right all the time. Or even most of the time. He needs to say those things to you, just as you needed to say that you think he's being a coward. I don't agree with either of you but I don't think you'll be able to see each other's side if you don't hash it out. If you want to know what my opionion of you is, you just have to ask me." Alex lifted her hands out palm up, "You're both my friends. I love you both. I don't automatically take anyone's side. You asked me to come and keep things from exploding and I did that to the best of my ability and the best of my judgement. I'm not infallible. I mean, I wash I was, but I'm just human too. I'm sorry if you got that impression out of everything, but I don't think you're some horrible person that wants to hurt people."