DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Alternate Reality PHX: Phoenix Reform Academy Boys common room

“Flaws or no, I’m a guttersnipe. If I’m anything, I’m Fagin - directing the discards I could find ta something productive. Yes, I read, no shock. Stole books common enough. Could teach other discards an’ make ‘em more useful. I mean, it was me or the stockyards, an’ no one wants those, right?”

Norton is still ‘looking at her’ even though she has faded, or at least at the spot she had occupied as if reassessing something in his mind.

Blake continues.

‘Survival is the art of targeted cowardice and trying not to care too much about anyone or anything in case they’re gone tomorrow, and above all not getting involved. Your mother ever teach you that one?”

Lamar

"Our situation was a little more... proactive. Thriving more than surviving."

Norton

Norton finally speaks again.

“Yeah, Lamar. I think your situation - and mine - might have been just a bit different. If they’re lucky, they’re half a street urchin, fighting for scraps and hoping not to be noticed. If they’re unlucky they are noticed, then they get to be lab rats. At least with you, with me, even if it was twisted sometimes our parents valued us to some degree, maybe even had something resembling a parent’s instinct. I mean, you even call her mother. Right?”

Lamar

"Well, it's accurate. I don't bear ill will towards her, by and large. Difficult to, given who and what she is. She genuinely raised me, decent education to go along with the... less decent one."

“She CARED though, no? Were you a lab rat? I was a potential weapon, no two ways about that, but he wasn’t as likely to kill me as to keep me. I’ll give him that much, however small it is.”

Blake speaks.

“Yeah, boo hoo. Had it rough. I’m still vert rather than horiz and all my parts still attached so I’m a lucky one. At least I can still look at myself in the mirror. Wait. Strike that. Heh.”

Lamar

"It is so much harder to give a definitive answer to either of those questions given we're dealing with an empathic metamorph here. I saw someone who cared. Was that the truth or was it her power taking what I wanted to see and making it so? I did not see her treatment of me as though I were an experiment. Again, reality, or a perfectly shaped appearance to in turn shape my perceptions and deductions? I give her the benefit of the doubt, but there's so much more potential doubt. It does your head in."

Blake:

“Yeah. Well. I don’t have much reason to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, to much doubt, too little benefit. And what benefit there is definitively does not belong to me. And as I said. I’m not good I’m a survivor. And you don’t survive by being stupid.”

Lamar

“Truth well spoken,” concurred the shapeshifter. “But there’s a reason wolves hunt in packs, lions in prides. Optimal survival strategies, out where nature is red in tooth and claw.”

Blake:

“And you Lamar? You don’t feel like a wolf in the pack. We have a bunch of lone wolves here, each howling’ at the moon in their own way.”

Lamar

"I like the lion analogy better, having powers leads to having plenty of Pride. But that's the thing. Animal analogies only go so far with sentient beings. People who see what's out there, weigh up their chances. There's safety in numbers, both in terms of crowd size and how highly their powers rate. We have a bunch of people that can and do think, having the flexibility to team up when necessary and initiative to go their own way when it is safe to do so, and sufficient wisdom to tell the difference. Humans aren't wolves, wolves wish they could pull off some of the collective shenanigans we can."

Blake

“Wisdom. Hah. No wise people, just people who think they are smarter than the universe at large and get disabused of the notion quick.”

Lamar

“Ironically a statement that proves itself, in that it assumes itself wiser than any potential so-called wisdom, and that other people will be the ones getting disabused.”

Suddenly the lights flicker and dim briefly before resuming full intensity

Lamar

"Concerning. Just long enough for something to get through a barrier, if I was being paranoid about it."

Blake: “is there any other way to be but paranoid? Still. Had to guess it’s the Sorensen Girl that I’ve seen spying around in mirrors.”

Lamar

"Assuming it was a friendly isn't particularly paranoid, but balance of probabilities seems likely. Still, best keep an eye out."

The shapeshifter opened a third one briefly.

“Lamar, that is seriously creepy, dude.”

Lamar

He shrugged. “Far from the first time I’ve used it as punctuation. Nothing to worry about, it’s not as if I’m shifting into a hulking abomination of teeth or claws, or an apex predator, or a thick-skinned, sharp-tusked pachyderm.”

Blake:

“But you could. You are dangerous. Not like me.”

Norton snorts.

“Yeah, Blake. Sorry. But you are about the last person I wouldn’t be worried about. Maybe other than Lamar here. With most of the others' I’d know what was coming.”

Lamar

"Harsh, but on the balance of things probably fair, I wouldn't be here if I hadn't been using my powers in ways others would find questionable. That said, if I didn't do my occasional 'I'm a shapeshifter' stuff, it'd be worse. If I looked like the same baseline regulation human all the time, I'd be concealing my powers from the rest of us. Instead, I'm comfortable with them being seen, my unknowns are known in terms of scope and potential. You might not know what was coming, but you'd know what kind, and if I'm right here just doing parlour tricks as part of friendly discourse, I'm not some horrific stealthy thing lurking, ready to pounce unseen instead. Everyone here has powers, the ones where you can't tell what they are, are where we need to be most cautious. Unknown unknowns."

Blake

“Yeah. Watch the Destroyer of Worlds. Watch Eric. Worried there.”

She pauses again.

“You still think I should sneak out and look more? Or tell them I have been, which could be just as bad.”

Lamar

"Ultimately, not my call to make. I'm in favour of information gathering in principle, assessment of risk versus reward is best done by the one risked." He commented.

Blake

" The ones causing all the trouble, alchemy, Nyx - you met them before? I think your mother associated with them. Have you …?”

Lamar

"Those two in particular? No. Bear in mind my mother is dangerously sharp, always a few steps ahead. Exposing me to them would be potential leverage over her, because there's not many things I can turn into that can withstand matter to energy conversion. Entropy is another matter, I'm probably better able than most to withstand it, given reorganizing my physical form is just what I do. But not worth the risk of putting a child near a meatgrinder just to find out. My mother is at her best when everyone else is grasping at formless smoke, with no idea what they're truly dealing with. That goes for all sides. In her own way she's definitely as dangerous, if a lot subtler about it."

“Right now, we’re clutching smoke. I’ve been in their presence. Not sure they knew I was there. Was glad of that. Everything around them was … like insects. To be studied. Dissected.”