heroic;meeting

[poll_the_stars]

8-2-5-3, types in Yvette. Code to the door, seized from the nearby guard's mind. She'd think an apology in his direction, but she's too busy keeping the mask up. If she fails to keep the mask up... Well, she's going to have one very bad day, now isn't she?

The mask doesn't flicker. The lab coat gives her an official air. She walks into the base like she is late for an appointment and very important and no one stops her. People barely even look at her. One person goes to ask her a question, but she ducks her head and mumbles something about not having her coffee yet (it is rather early) and the person nods understanding and leaves her be. She even goes and grabs a cup of coffee, to look official and sleepy and to buy herself time as she fumbles for a key card that isn't there while waiting for calculations to finish so she can wipe someone's memory of her and keep walking like nothing happened.

She gets cornered at the last checkpoint before the room she knows contains the time machine. She goes and finds an office to hide in as she figures out the exact way she's going to find someone with the codes to this door. She has a clip board. She has coffee. She has a mask and a labcoat and her hair's up in a very neat, scientisty-bun. She's practically an employee. Don't mind her, everyone. And if you do, hold still, she needs to wipe you.

Comments

[poll_the_stars]

(Terrorist? She flinches from the word, a little stung. She tries not to kill people, she doesn't want to spread terror, she wants to stop these psychopaths, and furthermore- nope nope. Extra nope. Extra nope painted with a cheery heart symbol on it, don't mind what's behind here, it's unfair and kind of rude and would end in sorrow! She's sorry! She is friendly and nice and here have a feeling of a hug, you're safe here.)

(She is actually quite sincere about her assurances. She doesn't feel very - her mind literally does not think that doing something nasty to him is a sensible course of action, in any way, shape, or form. She doesn't randomly want to hurt people on principle, but also it just - doesn't make any goddamn sense to attack Aisilian here and now? If she wanted to kill him or turn him into a vegetable, she would have snapped his wards into itty bitty pieces earlier, or done it before letting him inside her shields. She didn't do that. She would not like to turn him into a vegetable. (And, in fact, hasn't done that to anyone, even to some people who probably deserved it.) And - it doesn't make sense to hurt a person that she would willingly let share her mind. That is not a thing that should be.)

She calms down a little, upon seeing him handling himself reasonably well. Re-finds her center, reorganizes her methodology, agrees to answer him on his own terms instead of leaving her mind to do whatever it likes.

Hello, Aisilian. (She thinks it is rather silly to frame this as a telepathy conversation, but she has the spare head for it at the moment and is keenly aware of how she should make this as safe and pleasant as possible.) Thank you for being blunt and honest with me, it makes this easier on both of us. (Though she will sincerely try to make this as nice as possible even if he is the most unhelpful annoying little twit the world has ever seen.) I'm uh. Not exactly embarrassed, but... She is annoyed by how her mind isn't completely behaved, she wishes she were better at this, and she can't just meditate and go silent because she has a fuckton of other things to do and has to keep doing. She doesn't regret or feel ashamed of how she thinks or how her mind works, but she wishes that it would pay attention to her major preferences of 'Don't do anything to cause this to explode.'

I am a little uncomfortable, admittedly. And she is, she dislikes being small and not in control and relying so heavily on someone else to get things done. She wishes she could get to know Aisilian better before getting shoved together like this (A part of her mind comes up with a physical metaphor for it, noting that he very likely isn't as sensitive to how exactly this feels, and it involves him on top of her with his lips at her throat and his hands nope nope nope stop that) and having this sort of distrust and fear just floating around causing problems. (From his end, mostly, she's afraid of what he could do, not of him personally. And she seems to be systematically tackling that fear, because it doesn't make sense and is unfair. He had the perfect chance to screw her over, and didn't, and purposefully prevented himself from pressing the panic button.)

But I'm doing all right. She is, actually. Uncomfortable and small and a little overworked (it is much harder to do all of the things she was doing from this tiny little spark than if she were full sized) but she despite the slightly shitty opener she's recovered and is back to being competent again. (She likes being competent.) I apologize about um. Earlier. And she is sorry that she started things off like that, she was caught off guard by her greeting to the meld being 'Oh hey here is the thing I could use to seriously damage you.' It was a little. Alarming, actually. Still, she blames herself for not preparing for that sort of thing beforehand, and for her little - she doesn't describe it as a tantrum, exactly, but she does think badly of herself for letting her head get away from her like that. She is very goal oriented, when she doesn't have one her head is chaos, and she didn't have a goal. Bad form. She will do better.

Would it at all help if I tried to show you what sort of person I am so you can feel more comfortable with me? Good lord that's formal, that's kind of ridiculous, he's going to get a damn good glimpse of what sort of person she is just from this, regardless of what happens. But she would rather not catch him off guard with a giant 'By the way I am this sort of person' dump, and she's still trying to compose things in a telepathic manner for his benefit (silly as it is) so - that. Possibly overly formal. She dips into that under pressure. Whoops.

(She's a little antsy to get to doing things, but she acknowledges that building bridges here is dramatically important and they won't get very far if they don't. So, she's going to build some bridges.)

[meletiti_entelecheiai]

Aisilian's mind is - not like that, at all. Besides the collection of unconscious algorithms, his conscious mind is a focused laser beam, a single point of focus with all his genius backing it.

It's entirely possible for him to split his attention, but that just produces two points of focus; his mind has been trained not to "spread out," to relax.

So it's not so much that he finds telepathy more comfortable, as that his mind is set up to pass all information through a high-bandwidth port through his active consciousness, rather than piecemeal impressionistic holistic ideas.