What is a writer?
A miserable little pile of words!


Call me MP or Miz


Fiction attempted, with various levels of success.


Yes, I do need help, thank you for noticing.



caffeinatedOtter
@caffeinatedOtter

This is what I was warning people about for literal years: a telepath decided I could be a threat, prodded my brain, and I just...failed to notice them. Brushed off the Lizard Navy telling me they were there. And then simply fell the fuck over and stayed there, unable to move. That's how you know that whatever the Mesmerist's fucking deal was, he wasn't a telepath; because even as a rank amateur antique idiot, he'd have seen me coming, and I'd never have touched him.

I lie on the floor and poisonously hate them.

"You're fine," Tryst says dismissively, out of my immovable field of view.

Tryst was my favourite of them, by a long shot, back in the day. The fact she never directly cooperated with the Pentagon's OCULUS telepath programme was a big part of it; and of course, she did porn instead, so she couldn't be all bad, right?

And then the Pentagon changed its mind and tried to kill them all instead of weaponising them, and I...helped keep them alive. I could give you a few reasons: a vestigial conscience. A pragmatic sense that it's less irreversible to save their lives than to desperately need a telepath for some reason afterwards. (Also: they could have programmed the impulse into me as a backup plan.)

But now they've laid a finger on Becky. They're done.

"Are you faking?" Tryst says suspiciously, and I twitch all over as something cold and prickly happens in my brain. She makes a noise like a mechanic about to tell you your car has developed something very expensive. "You'll be okay in a minute," she says, sounding like it's largely for Becky's benefit, since I still can't move and whatever she just did has left sparkling trails across my vision.

I snarl, since it doesn't require forming actual syllables, face lying in a spreading pool of my own drool, and Tryst heaves an impatient sigh.

"Doctor Dudley," she says, "I think she'll be less — that — if she has a towel under her face to soak up her dribbling while her motor functions recover. Go and fetch one."

I manage to murderously twitch a couple of fingers at her putting Becky's name in her mouth; there's a long pause, and then Becky passes through the slice of kitchen I can see, staring at me white-faced, hands clenched. I meet her eyes while I can; she disappears from the room.

Tryst walks over instead, drops to one knee next to me, and reaches down to carefully turn my head. She looks like the past couple of years have put a decade on her, and not a graceful one; the slinkiness and cultivated tan and gym-bunny biceps have melted to a drawn intensity and a wiry, underfed air of coiled and rage-fed motion. "That fucking booby trap OCULUS put in your brain," she says quietly. "You finally stressed it to the point that any outside touch on your mind risks popping your brain like a zit. Congratulations." She peers at my eyes while I glare. "Next time you zugzwang me into self-defence, it's likely to kill you, and if that happens I can't even imagine how bad—" and she grinds to a stop, eyes screwed up and mouth working as if she's trying to continue a sentence that she physically can't.

Finally, she gives up on it, whatever it is, and pulls out a scrap of paper and a pen, movements angrily snappy, and writes something down. Becky comes back in halfway through and hovers, clutching a towel as if she wishes it was something lethal she could fling at the back of Tryst's head. Tryst doesn't spare her a glance, but thrusts a hand out for it; Becky edges just close enough to hand it over, staring at me, lips trembling.

"She just takes longer to bounce back after years of—" Tryst says shortly, and grinds to a stop again, angrily grips the folded towel, and reasonably gently slides it under my head. She puts the scrap of paper down on the edge of it, where I can see it. "There's a date, a time and place on there. Ditch your new bodyguards. Don't try to call in help. Just show up."

And I twitch with a renewed wave of murderous intent, because the only way to ensure I do any of that—

"Doctor Dudley is coming with me," Tryst says, and starts to rise to her feet. I stare past her at Becky, trying to promise, trying to reassure her with only my eyes: I'll be there. I'll get you out of this. I will fix this.

And then Tryst pauses, halfway to standing, and strained and barely audible manages to snarl at me: "Ask the right questions, Quiesce," before taking Becky away.


It's cold on the floor. When I can eventually peel myself off the tiles and stagger out to the shuttle, past the empty space where Becky's car should be, I'm shivering, my head heavy and achy.

Don't call in help. As if I could; I retired, and Amanda just made real fucking clear how many friends I have left at my own goddamn — her team. It's just me. The lizards would be a huge help, if not for ditch them.

No, of course I'm not going to; but I'm going to have to err on the side of subtlety. Of prearranged signals for emergency backup. I don't know what I'm walking into, and I'm not provoking whatever fucking asshole has Becky.

Becky and Tryst, I guess; no matter how ready I am to believe telepaths bad, that looked a hell of a lot like she wanted to tell me shit and couldn't, in the same way Becky couldn't. I've been thinking of the OCULUS survivors as a bloc, still, a unified entity; and sure, they're all telepaths, all of the known telepaths in the world, but without the shared membership, the power structure that OCULUS afforded them, endangered and on the run, did that keep them together? Or has someone found new purpose, new power, in being King Bastard of Mind Contol Mountain, since they were all out in the supervillain cold anyway?

And my brain is a spun sugar Kick Me sign, apparently. Fucking wonderful.

But. But. Tryst obviously thinks I have the pieces to put together into answers: ask the right questions, Quiesce. She thinks I can fix this, maybe.

(I'd say something moody about failure is not an option, but really, has it ever been?)

The lizards take one look at me and hiss a lot. I slump glumly into a chair.

"There is," I tell them, "a political problem."


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