749/Sense of Doubt

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Sense of Doubt
Date of Scene: 02 June 2017
Location: Unknown
Synopsis: In which Tommy approaches Hank McCoy for answers, and ends up reconsidering his course.
Cast of Characters: 87, Beast




Vorpal (87) has posed:
A few days ago

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from:thunter@metrou.edu
to: hmccoy@*****.edu
Subject: Consultation.


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Dear Dr. McCoy,

You have no reason to know me, but I was told to reach out to you concerning some very peculiar circumstances. My cousin, a journalist in whom I hace confided about my condition, made mention that he had heard of you and of your association with a particular school, and that your expertise with circumstances similar to mine might give you some insight as to my particular problem and, well, abilities.

If you would have the time and the inclination to meet, I can discuss this further in person. I think it really would be better to see things in person.

Thanks,
Thomas Hunter.

===========================

The red-headed teenager sits, fidgety and uncomfortable while he waits outside of the classroom. To look at him, there is nothing terribly unusual about him, except perhaps that he is exceptionally pale and gives the impression that he might just burst into flames if a stray sunbeam were to touch him.

But he's a ginger, that's par for the course.

He fidgets a little more, and takes out his phone out of his jeans pocket. He sends off a quick text while he's there, checking on a friend, and then leans back to wait some more.

Beast has posed:
It's been a long few days. The action he saw in Africa has still got Hank "The Beast' McCoy a bit under the weather but he /is/ recovering, thank god, and he has a job to perform still.. That of teaching. Of course, today was a quiet day for his classes.. School is almost out for summer and a number of students have already left to be with their families.. at least those who have places to go.

When the bell rings, the doors open and a handful of students spill out, all laughing and grinning. A moment later Hank is behind them, readjusting his spectacles. "Remember, you can lose a whole moths knowledge, of not more, over summer if you don't keep reading and applying what you learned." he reminds them, and gets a laugh from the kids. he sighs and shakes his head, running hsi claws through his blue mane and turns to see....

"Ah, yes.. Sorry. You are Mister Hunter, are you not?" he asks. Yes.. he is a big blue walking feline/simian Beast... in Oxford Tweed. Well, MOSTLY blue.. there is a white streak at his temples (that he earned only days ago). "I take it you found your way here without any trouble, yes?" His voice is.. very deep.. A smooth and educated baritone that can't QUITE shake his Ohio roots.

Vorpal (87) has posed:
Tommy stops for a second. He had heard about the Doctor's appearance, of coure, and there might have been a photo on the faculty page, but the impression that you got in person was something else.

It might even look, for a moment, that Tommy was shocked. It is only a fleeting thing, however, becacuse suddenly he gives a very warm grin and approaches Hank. "Doctor McCoy, yes, it wasn't any trouble at all. Thank you for seeing me in such short notice."

He hesitates for a moment, and then holds out his hand in formal greeting. His hand may look smooth and hairles to the touch, but if Hank shakes it he will notice the hand to feel as if it, too, were covered in fur.

"I hope I haven't come at a bad time, with the end of the semester and all..."

Beast has posed:
Hank is used to some people looking shocked at his Visage. Hell, sometimes he still shockes himself. It hasn't been an easy road though as of late.. it has gotten easier.. A thought that warms Hanks heart somewhat.

That the young man doesn't outright bolt and even offers his hamd is a good sign. Hank takes the offered hand, carefully, and shakes it... and raises a brow as the less furry pads of his fingers catch the tactile sensation of.. "Hmmm.. Interesting..." he mumrurs.. then shakes iot off and relases the hand and offers a snaggletoothed smile.

It is no trouble at all, Mister Hunter. And it is perhaps the /best / time to come see me since we don't have a motley crew of students to distract us.. Come in to the classroom." he says and moments later teh outr door is shut and he has Thomas seated on a chair across from his desk, behind which is an /old fashioned chalk board/. Do people still USe chalk.

"So from the, lets call then 'vaguaries' of your letter.. and my specialization in the fields of biochemistry especially as it pertains to mutation and metahuman enhancement, I take it you have recently undergone a.. physiological change. And not of the standard variety for someone of your age?" he asks.

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"You've got it, Doctor. Although it might as well be puberty all over again because..." The redhead rubs his forehead and then looks around. He doesn't know why he's being so cautious, considering /where/ he is. Habit, perhaps. "I must first make a disclaimer, and it's that I don't use recreational drugs. The reason I say it is because everytime I go into it, it sounds like I'm tripping ba--under some influence I mean!" he quickly corrects himself.

He takes a steadying breath. "This isn't really my body, Doctor McCoy. Not exactly anymore. I suffered an accident that, for all purposes, killed me. When I got better- so to speak- I woke up in a new body, and I have some serious doubts about it."

He looks up at the chalkboard. He briefly resists the urge to get up and draw something on the board. He'd get his fur all chalky and dusty, and then he'd have to go and rub it off on people. Actually, that sounds like fun.

Beast has posed:
Hank ... doesn't look phased by any of these revelations that the young man has so fasr put forth. His claws are steepled before him as he leans back in his comfy leather office chair, listening intently.. It's easy to tell he's listening since his cat's ears twitch a little.

"So... lets get this straight... You don't partake in recreational chemicals, which I may add is a very good thing, and you were involved in an accident that terminated your life processes.. but then were resurrected by some means. And I doubt, from how you describe it, that it involved modern medicical treatments since, you state, this body you now inhabit is not your original one... Okay, I am with you so far."

He didn't even bat an eye.

Vorpal (87) has posed:
By this point, his cousin had had to have one minor brain rebooting, courtesy of chocolate liqueur. This was exceptionally smooth.

Alright. Here goes the more outrageous part.

"I'm actually the amalgam of the soul of my old self" wait for it "and of" here it comes "the, um, the Cheshire Cat."

That is when he decides to drop the illuion that's keeping his appearance human. By all means, he isn't *that* outrageous-looking when compared to blue fur. Granted, the red of his stripes and mane are too intense for it to ever be what some would consider a 'natural' color, but that's about it.

Outside of the giant cat. "You can see my predicament."

Beast has posed:
Again, Doctor McCoy doesn't seem to be surprised. Oh, one of his fuzzy blue brows raises in a Spock-Like fashion but beyond that.. he is utterly composed. Calm. S-S-S-Smooooooth as ice.

"The Chesire Cat." he says.

"The suposedly fictional feline character by Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, known for its distinctive mischievous grin, whome while is most often celebrated in Alice-related contexts actually predates the 1865 novel and has transcended the context of literature and become enmeshed in popular culture, appearing in various forms of media from political cartoons to television as well as cross-disciplinary studies from business to science and who one of its distinguishing features is that from time to time its body disappears, the last thing visible being its iconic grin..

He is silent for a moment...

"/That/ Chesire Cat....?"

Yep. Not even a blink. He Didn't even call Mental Health.

Vorpal (87) has posed:
He was taking this too much in stride. It actually... begins to irritate Tommy. Just a little bit. So he pushes.

It begins with his tailtip, then his feet. Soon, there is nothing left of him, but his iconic grin. Iconic iconic, not Ubisoft iconic.

"That's me," the floating grin says, and the rest of Tommy fades back into view. "Wonderland is a place. It's deep, many layers beneath reality. I can remember it, but-" he holds out a hand and a small Rabbit Hole appears. It shows Hank' profile. In fact, were Hank to turn his face, he would see... his profile again, from the angle of the other Rabbit Hole. "There's parts of that other me that are missing, and I don't know why. I can't go deep anymore, I can only scratch the surface."

The rabbit hole by Hank's face vanishes. The rabbit hole by Tommy's hand now shows the New York skyline. A warm breeze actually comes through the hole and into the classroom.

Beast has posed:
Finally! A reaction. He doesn't /blink/ per se as the young cat-man does his things just as a real Chesire Cat would do... He just gently removes his spctacles and squints at them, then sighs and starts polishing them with a kerchief he pulls from his pocket.

"The Chesire Cat... Wonderland... Why the hell not. It's not like I haven't had a drinking contest with a Norse God who wields a magical hammer before." he mutters, then inspects his glasses, puts them back on, and leas foreward, claws clasped together on his desk.

"If you would /please/ stop opening and closeing what I am pretty sure are self contained EinsteinRosen bridges which can stress the space-time in a small area if continually used and, if it fractures the sub-spacial condensate could cause a chain reaction and, just possibly, /KIll US All/... Well then maybe, just prhaps, we can get to the reason you are here."

He sighs again. "Sorry, I don;t mean to come off as grouchy but I've had a rough week, what with having a few years of my life force sucked out of me.. Anyways.. You have been altered and embued with abilities by... what.. some sort of mystical entity?" he pauses, thinking to himself.. talking to himself.."If wonderland exists it would fit that definiative parameter, mystical, though truthfully it and it's inhabitants may not be magic and instead exist because enough people believe that it does and the psychic energy of concentrated belief retrogradely caused it to come into self-sustained extra-dimensional existance..."

He quicly shakes that off and looks back at the young mancat. "But regardless of how this happened and the philosophical, thaumaturgical and scientific ramifications it implies... How can /I/ help you? You seem faitly well versed on the use of these abilities.. and mystical anigmas, while intresting, are not my forte."

Vorpal (87) has posed:
Now it is Tommy's turn to look frightened. "... wait. You mean that it could be possible that if the people forget there is a Cheshire cat, I might just..." he mouths 'poof.'

Congratulation, that is at least ten catnaps worth of sleep that are completely *gone* now.

"I...er. Well. Thing is, I know that before the merge the Cheshire cat was, more or less, immortal. After? Well. Not really. I can be cut, I can be hurt, beheaded, etcetera. But what worries me is..."

He tries to grasp what he wants to say. He's tried to think about the best way to say it several times already.

"I'm a cat. There's no two ways about it. Human-like, yeah, but at the end of the day..." whatever michief was in his eyes and expression is replaced by a very worried, almost haunted look.

"Cats don't live that long, doctor. I want to find out, if there's a way. I thought, well, maybe you would know... what with the school and all... and I'm not really -that- well versed with my powers. I just know they're there."

Beast has posed:
Hank brings up his hands in a placating gesture, trying to hold off any panic. He could see it in the young man's eyes.. It wasn't dissimilar to his own feelings long ago when he underwent his secondary (if accidenlty self imposed) mutation.

"I rather doubt you will cease to exist, even if everyone in the world 'forgot' about the Wonderland stories. Allow me to paraphrase, with a more scentifically accurate correction, an old physics saying. /Information/ can be neither created nor destroyed, only changed. Scientifically energy, matter, everything is information. And all information that has existed, and will existd, is still IN existance right now.. But thats neither here nor there.."

He thinks a moment again... "First off... You are /not/ a cat. Strike that from your mind. You may have feline qualities, but a /cat/ is a cat is a /cat/. It is not a sentient being. I am /feline/ perhaps, or I should say I have an Atavistic mutatation that activated feline DNA in my genome.. But that doesn't make me a /cat/. So neither are you. regardless if science or magic caused your change. Trust me, you aren't teh ONLY mystically altered feline-themed being on earth. It's more common than you think. You are a sentient feline sapien, not a tabby.

"Second, cats do not age /faster/. That is a misconception. Different levels of feline, from domesticated house cat to the great cats, all /seem/ to age fatser than humans but really they are aging at their proper speed. There lifespan is dictated by evolution, not a "speed", and their genetic need to fill a niche in the environment,maintain a certain population density, and outpace genetic attrition.. So just /having/ feline features, or even having feline genes, won't age you faster. You would age at the speed of the highest order DNA in your body, which would be your Sapien dna.. which you have or you wouldn't have a humanoid form."

"And third.. You probably won't age fatser because, Magic. I may not be an /expert/ but when magic is involved in embuing abilities on mortals it RARELY consists of a component that hastens teh aging process. Oh, some people may feel or look older when they are first changed, but that is magic just reseting the body to it's 'Prime Form'. Look at nearly every other magically altered hero /or/ villain out there. Notice how they are usually almost all inssuferably attractive and fit? And then don't seem to /truly/ age? Because, /Magic/."

Vorpal (87) has posed:
Tommy frown, trying to take all of this in. He does have to admire Doctor McCoy for willingly engaging in lecture mode for his benefit, even though he has had an exhausting week.

He can't be like that all the time, right?

"I hadn't even thought of that. I mean, I didn't come with an instruction manual. I didn't even consider my rabbit holes could kill us all," he says with obvious concern in his voice. "Although I hope that isn't the case. I go in and out of those things all the time. And I've put people through, like, all the time."

He rubs the bridge of his nose, but then his personality does manage to emerge, "Insufferably attractive? I wish I had gotten hit with *that* magic bolt. Ever since I transformed, let me tell you, my dating prospects have gone down to" WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING "something you don't want to talk about," he corrects himself. Oh my god, do not say stuff like that to the very nice guy who happens to look like a blue cat and is generously giving you his time so you can blabber at him like an idiot!

He looks down at the desk, grateful that fur doesn't show someone blushing from embarrassment. "-there's a lot like I feel I should know that I don't. I wanted to be a journalist like my dad and my cousin, and now my life is ..." he fishes for the right phrase.

"Curioser and curioser. I can't really go back to the way things were before, and I'm totally ignorant on how to hero except for the bit about leaping across buildings and finding tights that don't ride up on you."

Beast has posed:
Hank 's eyes soften a bit.. he can see that the young man /is/ under some stress. How could he not be, considering what he has gone through an what he has, or thinks he has, become. Not that Henry McCoy /doesn't/ believe that the kid is the Chesire Cat. It's completely possible, after all, all things considered and what he has seen already in teh world. It's just, he doesn't think he is /The/ Chesire Cat. He has a feeling that it's more of a sense of the kid becoming the 'archetype' rather than the actual entity in itself.

But that is /personal/ opinion, not fact.. Not yet. And he is not somome to MAKE that decicision. There are other doctors, stranger one, who would. (see what he did there?)

"You have only just changed, Mister Hunter. It wil take you a while to figure out /who/ you are now.. But be assured that it /will/ be you. Change doesn't make you a different /person/... You are the same person, just with a different perspective. It's something EVERYONE deals with. Not just mutants, though we tend to stand out because if the severity fo our changes.. But even normal people have similar, if less literal, changes that are just as life altering."

"So as you 'find yourself', remeber you don't jst need to discover what you are capable of doing but to discover what you /want/ to /do/. You don't need to be defined by youe change. I am a scientist, yet I am also a mutant 'beast'. I didn't let my bestial tendencies and abilities change what I wanted, so neither should you. Yes, things may get harder, like.. well.. relationships.." he coughs once. "ANd no, we don't need to talk about specifics.. but the generalities are.. there is someone, or someones, out there for everyone.. EVen us cat people."

He then smirks. "And if you haven't broke space-time yet, I doubt you will anytime soon. I just like to make people /think/ about the possible concquences."

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"What you say makes a lot of sense," Tommy says quietly. And he makes a show of incredible self-restraint not smirking when it is said that there is someone for everybody, even cat people. Being who he is, he gets a positively terrifying mental image that involves a crazy cat lady kidnapping him and keeping him hostage, with overtones of Stephen King's "Misery" thrown in for good measure. This gives a temporary boost to his earlier resolution to reject any potential romantic entanglements. Who needs that kind of nightmare when you've got the Rocky Horror Picture Show, right?

"But... I do like it. That's the thing. I like both. But I guess even if I don't follow through with doing the hero thing, I really should try to learn more..." he miles a little out of the corner of his mouth. "You know, know that an Einstein-Rosen bridge in't the new one they're building over at the island. That sort of thing." He pauses, and says, "Do you think..." he does a small wave to encompass the classroom specifically, the school in general "... I might fit in somehow? I mean, I didn't really look at the webite and I don't know if there's college levels here but... I just thought."

Beast has posed:
Hank leans back in his chair again, his claws on his chest with digits intertwined. "This is the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, Mister Hunter. Not mutants. /Youngsters/. Yes, we were founded primarily to help foster relations between Mutants and Humanity, to educate mutants to whom standard school would not be prudent all while teaching them the responsible use, and /non/ use of their abilities.

He leans foreward again, on his desk, and regards the young man directly. "But the world is changing, /has/ changed, and 'gifted youngster' means more than being a young mutant, or a metahumn, or godling or alien larvae or nascent mystical creature. It means a youngster, period, who is gifted. And who needs help. Also Period."

The blue furred scientist smiles. "I don't see why you would /not/ fit in here, Mister Hunter, if you truly felt you needed to be here. Because as much as we reach out to others, we are also here to be reached /for/."

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"Thank you, Doctor. You've given me a ton to think about." The cat exhales and stands up. "I've taken up a lot of your time but... I'm going to think. I know I need to be fast if I want to tranfer for the summer."

He is silent for a few seconds before he adds, "And if you have any recommendations on what I can read during the summer..." it sounds like he's made up his mind.

"I'll just stop by on my way out and get the forms. Again, thank you, Doctor, and thank you for giving me so much of your time." He holds out his hand.