232/Sifu and Grasshopper

Sifu and Grasshopper
Date of Scene:	01 May 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Raven, 203

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Raven has posed:
    The conversation with Emma on the campus (and Lucy, though from Rachel's perspective there is no conversation with Lucy; she's an outsider through and through on that, though it doesn't bother her) carries on a bit, and Emma and Lucy head out to discuss matters more privately. Rachel isn't sure why. Since Emma's a telepath, she can have any manner of private conversation she wants in any location, so there must be more to it than that. But she shrugs and offers to you, "I'm not a telepath, but I do know some techniques that are helpful to psychics, if you want to learn."

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont looks over to Rachel and lifts an eyebrow. "Oh?" She adjusts her glasses before continuing. "I'd be delighted if you could show me a few things. My powers are limited to telepathy, psychic shields, and psychic blasts. Useful, but...a rather shallow skill set. Anything you could teach me would be appreciared."

Raven has posed:
    "Alright. This will be weird, so let's go somewhere private." Rachel turns on her heel and starts walking across the campus, assuming you'll follow her. She doesn't have much to say, so she doesn't introduce a topic of conversation, but she responds if you try to chat her up on her way to what seems to be her dorm, a top-floor room whose door she touches, which causes the lock to flash with black anti-light and click open. Her dorm is small--bedroom, kitchenette, living room, bathroom--but deeply dark. The curtains have been replaced with thick, heavy drapery that blocks the sun; the lightbulbs have been removed from the fixtures, and individual candles have been placed around the room. Books are all over the walls, but no TV, and in the shadows you think you see animal skeletons.
    "Alright. Sit down on the floor." Rachel glances at your chest, and amends, "Against a wall. You may as well have support. I'm going to sit in front of you, knees touching yours, with my hands on my knees, palms up. You'll put your hands on mine, palms down. Then is will get weird. Got it?"

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont follows behind Rachel, heels clicking against the tile as they step through the campus. She raises an eyebrow once Rachel unlocks the door with anti-light (darkness?), then steps in after her. Though Erin expects Rachel to flick a light switch on...she doesn't. A frown appears on her face. "Bit dark in here, isn't it? I can barely see. Candles, at least?" She sighs and sits as she's told anyway, leaning heavily against the wall and palms resting on her knees. "Alright, I suppose. Ready when you are."

Raven has posed:
    Rachel matches action to word and sits in front of you, waiting for you to join her. When you do, she explains, "I won't be teaching you the meditations today. Today I'll be showing you the effects. You need to see what I can teach you before you begin, or else we're wasting our time. Now, don't flinch." Rachel takes a deep breath and intones in her creaking voice, "Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" The black anti-light--it's not darkness, because it's darker than darkness, standing out against the black and sharpening vision without illumination; it's a very irrational thing to try to describe or comprehend--surges out of her chest, taking the form of a huge, black, two-dimensional bird whose claws seize your body, its talons large enough to wrap around you entirely, then pull you in toward the center of its 'mass' even as it shrinks. It's a portal of some kind, a portal to a void like outer space except the stars are wrong, the sky is wrong. It's like the sky is an immense wall of black paper and the stars aren't placed in it, they're behind it, the light showing through holes in the sky, it's burning and raving and mad, though you don't know how you can tell that in silence you float in. Beneath you, a thin, winding path of rock floats without context in the void, and Rachel is standing on it. She reaches up for you and takes your hand, tugging you down to stand on the path with her, where gravity decides to have some hold on you after all.
    "Welcome to my mind," she explains.

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont does as she's told, her hands placed atop Rachels. As the bird-like shape emerges from Rachel, she tenses up and steels her mind. Was this a trap? Is Rachel trying to feed on her psychic energy like a mental vampire? She's pulled in, and relaxes slightly...though not entirely. The strange, eldrich world is wholly unfamiliar to her, and she can't help but find it both fascinating and dreadful.

"Your mind? Christ...Are you seeing a psychiatrist?" She turns to look up at the sky and squints. "So, why am I here?"

Raven has posed:
    Rachel ignores the insult. "I don't know what your powers are like, but that's mine," Rachel says, pointing off to the void, to the black wall behind which the stars stream. "That burning light is my emotions. They're mostly bad. They want to hurt and to dominate and to claim and to possess and to do whatever they want without restriction or concern. They want to take." She pauses, considers adding the obvious, and chooses not to, though since you're in her mind with her right now, your powers might pick it up anyway if you think to try. "So, over years of mental and physical discipline, I built this world in my mind. I built a universe to keep the power away from me, and I filled it with silence to keep the voices out. I built this path so I can walk consciously and with intent to the places in my mind I need to go, and I punched each one of those holes so I can access my power through a very narrow focus point and be sure I have control over it. That fire that would destroy the universe gets filtered through the silence and stillness I choose to make with my own discipline, and it does what I tell it to." She looks back at you. "Does that sound like something useful to you?"

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont continues to stare out at the stars, then turns back to Rachel...and frowns. "I'm not good with abstractions like this. I think I understand what you're trying to say, though. You have a desire to do whatever you want, and take whatever you want. Like the Joker. And you've learned to resist it." She nods. "However, I have no such urges. I simply do whatever I feel is best. Plain and simple. Right now, I want to tap into my psychic energy and use it in other ways. Reach my full potential. How would a place like this help me?"

Raven has posed:
    Rachel shakes her head. "Close, but not quite. My power wants to do one thing. I want it to do another. So I force it to. I choose to deny it, I choose the shapes it will take, I choose to exercise it and make it stronger in the ways I want it to be rather than the ways it wants to be. Get me?"

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont nods firmly. "Yes. I understand. But my powers are purely my own. I don't have that problem. So how would this help me? I expect you want me to build a place like this in my own mind, representing my own psyche?"

Raven has posed:
    "That's how I was trained," Rachel confirms. "To change the contents of your mind, you need to create a metaphorical space in which the contents of your mind can be manipulated like external objects." That's a heck of an idea coming from a teenager in a ripped shirt and dog collar. "I think that's a skill you could benefit from learning, since it sounds like your powers do one thing and you want them to do another. What I can teach you won't be exact, because my power is magic; it's spiritual. Yours is psychic, which is grounded in the physical contents of your brain. Teaching yourself new powers will be like a stroke victim learning to walk, or someone with a stutter learning to build connections around that part of her brain. You'll have to learn part of that yourself, but I can show you the building blocks."

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont pauses for a moment, mulling it over. She looks back up at the sky again, then back to Rachel. "Alright, I'll do it. I take it we're going to go into my mind? How do we do that?" She raises an eyebrow. "Will I have some sort of animal come out of me?" A smirk appears on her lips.

Raven has posed:
    "No, that's the shape of my soul," Rachel explains. "Since you're psychic rather than magical, I don't even know if your soul is strong enough to have a shape. It might; I just don't know it," she adds, lest you take it as an insult. Though whether that softens the blow is anyone's guess. "First things first. Do you exercise? Your mind is a physical system, affected by your physical health. Your body needs to be in good shape or your mind won't be effective because its energy will be diverted to dealing with physical weakness."

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont raises an eyebrow at the first statement, but she ignores it. She never was the type to deal with metaphysical mumbo jumbo anyway. "I do back exercises daily. It helps...ease the strain on my back." She pauses, not feeling the need to elaborate. "I do my best to stay in shape, but I'm far from muscular. Not that I wish to be."

Raven has posed:
    "Muscle is the foundation of endurance, and endurance is what you're after. You don't have to be a bodybuilder. Martial arts do the trick, in more ways than one, since they also train you to regulate certain body chemicals that get released in a fight to make you faster and stronger but wear you down quicker. It's a place to start. The mental discipline starts with meditation. Do you know how?"

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont lets out a small snort. "Have you tried doing martial arts with two watermelons strapped to your chest?" She rolls her eyes and sighs. "I'm sure there's something I can do. Some kind of exercise that doesn't jostle the twins around." She stares off into space for a moment.

Raven has posed:
    Well, you brought it up. Rachel inclines her head briefly, gesturing at your chest with her chin. "You seem unhappy with your breasts. What's wrong, can you not afford a reduction?"

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont sighs, posture deflating. "I hate how big they are. It's called macromastia. My breasta developed early, and...grew excessively. I was a D cup in middle school, and twice that in high school. You can only imagine the looks and snickers behind my back." She shakes her head. A light pink blush forms on her cheeks. "But...at the same time, I couldn't bear to have them reduced. I-I don't know, it's...I just don't like the idea. They're...still a part of me."

Raven has posed:
    Raven nods. "I get that," she says, but doesn't elaborate. It would be too much effort to explain her relationship to her body. "Did growing up change the attention, or change the way you take the attention?" she asks. "Sorry if it's personal, but I've been thinking about the difference between kids and adults lately."

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont smiles. "I don't mind answering questions about my breasts, so long as they're purely out of curiosity." The smile fades. "It's just the perverts that bother me. I suppose I've simply gotten used to the staring and mumbling behind my back. The soreness has gotten better with back exercises, too, but I'll never be able to sleep on my back..." She huffs.

Raven has posed:
    Rachel nods again. All the practice she's had, she's starting to get good at it. "Just wondering. I had an idea that people never really grow past high school. So what's a pervert, to you? Has anyone ever been attracted to your breasts in a way you didn't think was creepy?"

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont frowns and looks away for a moment. "I'm afraid, at this point, there's too much confirmation bias on my part to accurately say so. I just assume every man that hits on me or shows interest in my breasts must be after sex, and nothing more. Why do you ask?"

Raven has posed:
    Rachel looks steadily at you. Her voice doesn't change; she has the same flat inflection and calm demeanor she always does as she explains, "I have to keep a very tight control on my emotions at all times. If they get loose, things break. Part of my training here has been to release my emotions in small, safe ways. Part of that is sexual desire." She shrugs. "I just kind of have it on the mind right now."

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont stares at Rachel squarely, head tilted. "...I beg your pardon? It's not -my- sexual desire that is the issue." She pauses, then hesitantly asks, "What kind of training does that entail?"

Raven has posed:
    "I know it's not your desire," Rachel says. Perhaps her tone is conciliatory. "Just the topic of perverts came up, and I feel like kind of a pervert lately. Part of the training involves planning, so I'm always planning little things I can do in order to do them safely. It makes a ritual of the event and brings it under closer control; it lessens the chance of having to improvise and lose control." She pauses. "I'm not trying to be confusing. I can be more explicit than that, but after talking about perverts, I don't know if you want to hear it."

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont stares squarely at Rachel. There's a few seconds of silence before she breaks it. "You're looking to do something that can be construed as sexual in nature. Or it -is- sexual in nature. What exactly will this help me accomplish? Theorhetics don't bother me, and, again, I don't mind purely scientific questions about my breasts. I'm irritated when someone assumes I'll have sex with them because I have large breasts."

Raven has posed:
    "I wasn't talking about you," Rachel replies, patient but irritated. "I was talking about me. I'm not trying to have sex with you; no offense, but I'm not attracted to you. I don't even know you. The topic came up and you're older than me, you have more experience than me. I thought I could learn something from you that would help with what I'm going through, that would help me understand something I don't understand and would be afraid of if I was the kind of person who could let myself be scared, you get it?"
    Okay, maybe she's a little more than irritated.
    Rachel regains her calm quickly, though. You have to give her that much. Her face clear instantly, with a will. "But okay. I teach you, you don't teach me. You never answered my question. Do you know how to meditate?"

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont blinks. That was unexpected. "...Oh. My apologies. I can be a little...self-centered at times." She clears her throat. "No, no, it's only fair that I compensate you for this...lesson. After this, then?" She sighs, then continues. "Yes, I know how to meditate. It helped me initially tap into my powers, but I haven't found the time recently, due to my busy schedule."

Raven has posed:
    Rachel pinches the bridge of her nose. You get the feeling she'd facepalm if didn't have a sharp-looking diamond-cut gem on her forehead. "'Dear diary, today I met a stranger, took her inside my brain to talk about meditation, but went off on a big tangent about her breasts and how to handle sex.'" She releases her nose and shakes her head. "The lives people like us live, huh?"

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont lets out a frustrated sigh. "Okay, okay, one thing at a time. Meditation. Yes, I know how to meditate. I used to do it to bring my psychic powers out, but these days, I feel I hardly have the time, and when I do it, I feel like I'm doing nothing. So, what next?" She folds her arms beneath her bust.

Raven has posed:
    Nothing, huh? Tough crowd, but then, Rachel's sense of humor is pretty lame. Alright. She drops the attempts at a joke and goes back to business. "You make time. If you don't have time to exercise, then you don't get stronger. You figure out what your priorities are and you drop what isn't a priority so you can spend an hour a day meditating and an hour a day exercising. As you get better at both, they'll start to blur together and save time. When you meditate, you're going to build your psychic landscape. You're going to visualize it as intensely as you can, and start populating it with objects from inside your mind that represent what your goals are." She shrugs. "If you can't do that, then you're looking for experimental surgery or chemicals or something. You could ask Doctor Mid-Nite, I guess."

Erin Beaumont (203) has posed:
Erin Beaumont sighs and nods. "Fair enough. I suppose I don't know what other answer I was looking for when I said 'I don't have time'..." She scoffs. "Endurance and meditation. Maybe I can see about doing both at once. Do the exercise unconsciously while focusing on my mental landscape." A breath escapes her lips, and she nods. "Thank you, Miss Rachel. I'll see what I can do."

Raven has posed:
    Rachel nods. "You're welcome," she says calmly. Just as calmly, she says, "I'm sorry I picked at a sore spot for you. It was selfish of me. I'll do better in the future." She gestures to the horizon and reminds you, "This is the goal. Perfect, exact details. Those stars never move because I memorize them and put them exactly in place. Your mindscape will be like that in the end. Hold still." Not much transition between the two topics of conversation.
    Rachel puts the tips of her fingers briefly against your forehead and then you're sitting with your back against the wall of her living room, your hands on top of hers. After the bird grabbed you? Did that even actually happen, then?
    Raven gestures at the door, and it pulls itself open. The light from the hallway is dazzling after apparently having been in the darkness for so long. "Come back if you want. I'll teach you some breathing techniques and visualization tactics."