“I gotta admit that getting Opened like this takes a big load off my mind,” Bobby Drake admitted, shaking his head. “I had no idea why the Professor couldn’t do so...”

“It’s the natural thoughts of a telepath. When minds are open to you, just take what you want, they can’t stop it. It’s not good or bad as long as it doesn’t hurt them, right? Bad telepaths are the ones who take over minds, make you pslaves, violate your will and self-control. Just spying on all your memories and duplicating all your skills and knowledge doesn’t hurt anyone.”

His face twisted. “I’ve seen the Professor wipe the memories of entire crowds and small towns to protect us, and maybe them...”

“Yeah, no. He was protecting himself, and it didn’t work. There’s always akashic resonance to that stuff, and the unconscious minds orient on it when there’s mental violations on that scale. That anti-mutant movement you know is stirring out there? His actions are the thing stirring it up the most, because he’s the powerful telepath. Mutants doing stupid crime is just supervillain stuff. It would be entertainment if he wasn’t putting the race conflict spin on the unconscious of humanity.”

He shook his head, looking at the bar in his hand, and released it to dissipate into golden wisps. He paused, resummoned it in a humming snap, then let it go again. “Hey, why is mine a bar, instead of a sword?”

“People tend to visualize a Weapon appropriate for themselves. A blade is common, as is a claw, but spears aren’t rare, and devoted archers can manifest a bow. Clubs and staves usually indicate someone who doesn’t like combat or fighting in general. It indicates you totally think of it as a back-up weapon, and would rather talk than fight.”

He didn’t take that badly, although he did think it over. “That sounds more like Hank, to be honest?” he scratched his head.

“Hank has excessive athletic gifts and a natural talent for combat. An edged mindblade is also the absolutely perfect knife, which is a scientific tool in many ways. The fact it looks like a long knife means he sees it as a tool as much as a weapon. If it was just a weapon to him, it would be a claw or claws, accentuating his natural ones, right?”

“Oh, that makes sense,” he agreed. “So, why am I here? An assessment? The Professor gives us those fairly often, measuring our progress...”

“He ever go into your potential in concrete terms?” I asked him.

“My potential?” he repeated. “Well, he says I have the potential to be really powerful, but that just sounds kinda empty. I mean, I make ice and snowballs...”

I lifted an eyebrow at him. “You just manifested a four-foot mindblade as a teenager, dwarfing both Hank and Warren by two orders of magnitude, and you’re still denying the truth?”

He stared at me and my tone, and swallowed at the warning there. “Well...” he trailed off, not knowing what to say.

I held up a finger. “Let’s say that the Earth were invaded, and in a pre-emptive strike they were going to eliminate the most powerful people, and those with the most potential among the Powered. Tell me, where do you think you are on that scale?”

“Um...” he hesitated again. I lifted an eyebrow. “Top ten percent?” he hazarded.

I pointed up.

“Top five?” Up. “Three? Two?... One?” I was still pointing. He was starting to sweat.

“Top tenth of a percent. One in a thousand, among the mutant Powered.” I tilted my head. “I don’t mean to state the obvious, but what do you think the main reason the Professor recruited Warren is?”

“He can fly, and he has wings! We wouldn’t look down on him just because he has wings.” I gave him That Look. “Uh... because his dad is rich?” he corrected himself after a moment.

“Very good. And Hank?”

He almost blurted something out, stopped. “Because he’s smart?” he finally said after some thought.

“Hank in his blues is one of the smartest people on the planet, albeit he’s still young right now. He is a bona fide genius polymath, his brain compared to a normal human exactly what his body is.

“Now, compare those two to you, Scott, and Jean.”

“Um!” He didn’t know what to say.

“No super brains, and no money. Obviously, you have something else. Guess what that is?”

“Power?” he hazarded slowly.

“Uh-huh. I went ahead and asked SHIELD how many teenage mutants with odd bodyforms or weak powers they knew of here in the States, who haven’t been killed yet. Want to guess how many they know of?”

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“The Professor has a machine that can detect mutants, called Cerebro. He says there’s more appearing every day...”

“SHIELD knows of over three hundred, just here in the States, who have been reported. My guess is the real number is ten times that, as most mutant powers are small and passive and don’t involve getting green hair or tentacle-hands or transparent skin.

“Three hundred, Robert Drake. How many students are at his little school?” His mouth opened and closed, but he held up four hesitant fingers. “One of the truly wealthy elite. A super genius. And two others, trying for a third. None of those three hundred. Guess why?”

He winced. “Because there was nothing special about them?” he asked quietly.

“Correct. The ones who needed his help the most are the ones he ignored the most. He only wanted the elites, the gifted, the truly talented, and the powerful.”

He dropped his eyes, taking a deep breath. “He sounds like such a dick now. I always admired him...”

“He’s a telepath. He knows how to act exactly how to impress you, because he can freaking read your mind,” I pointed out. “Telepaths are literally perfect actors because they can give their audience exactly what they want, and manipulate your thoughts even if they don’t use psi, because they can listen to what you are thinking, feel your emotions, and if they want to, go in deeper.”

“He, he taught us to shield ourselves from telepaths...” he defended weakly, and I just waved my hand.

“Get real. A telepath works on their Will and skills ALL THE TIME. You can only work on defending against them when a willing telepath lets you. Simple tricks will keep them out of your surface thoughts, but if they want to go prying, you’re not going to keep out any but the weakest telepaths if they want to get in.

“He’s literally the strongest natural telepath on the planet, and he’s the one teaching you mental defense. He can bypass your defenses as if they aren’t there.”

He swallowed despite himself. “And that’s why you’re wearing the circlets.”

“A telepath striking at you and seizing control of you not only knocks you off the enemy’s team, they add you to their team! That is a massive shift in a close fight. If you don’t have the Will, you better have something else to fall back on.”

He licked his lips. “And you think I’m as powerful as Jean and Scott?”

“You’ve got at least the same potential as Jean... before the Phoenix picked her, that is. Scott is just a total freak, and doesn’t even realize how broken he is. You’re as powerful as he is, just in a narrower band, and in active usage, not passive.”

I could see he didn’t understand, and went further, “Let me put it this way. You’ve probably never gone all out in making massive areas cold for various reasons, but you could buckle down and try to, right?”

“Well, sure,” he admitted. “There’s a lot of potential damage that could be done, and, and...”

“You don’t want to freeze people or animals or plants solid,” I said soothingly, and he flushed. “That’s fine. All it means is you need more control and confidence in your own power.

“Now, imagine that level of effort and cold, except you were radiating it all the time.” He blinked, and his jaw dropped. “Not any stronger, just all the time.

“That’s Scott. He’s not like you. You choose when your power goes on and off. His is always on. When he zaps someone with an optic blast, he’s not shooting them. It’s the rest of the time that’s important, when his visor is stopping him from shooting everybody.

“In other words, all Scott has to do is stare at a mountain, and eventually, he’s going to win that staring contest, because he will blow that mountain away, just by looking at it without his visor.

“That’s the difference between you two. If he actually had to focus and concentrate to let loose an optic blast, he’d basically be at the exact same power level as you and Jean.”

He sucked in a breath, staring at his hands. “My God,” he murmured. “That must have been horrible...”

“Yes. But your power is at the same level, just not constantly on.” I pointed at him. “You WILL eventually cover that mountain in ice. You WILL freeze that lake or sea solid. You WILL cover that city in ice. You WILL be able to freeze that lavaflow solid and keep pace with the volcano making it.

“You are the Iceman, and when the Iceman cometh, the world will freeze.” He stared at me as I went on. “You are THE most powerful cryokinetic on the planet, and one of the most powerful hydrokinetics. The combination of your powers entitles you to sit with the Champions, or even the High Guard, although the need for making ice to truly show off means you generally need a terrestrial base.

“You’re a potentially Epsilon-class Powered, with a power that borders on the cosmic, straddling the line between a psionic base and an Elemental one.” I kept his blue eyes as he swallowed again. “At your limit, you could easily make it snow around the ENTIRE WORLD.”

I let him go, and he slumped back into his chair. “My God, I had no idea...” he murmured to himself.

“And you were afraid of your power, and your control.” I sat back. “Now, you can turn off that power, and you can learn the control at the same level and pace as everyone else, then turn it back on and magnify it.

“You’re an average guy with a terrifying amount of power behind you, Robert Drake. Getting that much power dumped on you probably made you limit yourself, consciously or not. It’s like a normal kid suddenly having all the power of a Ten without the experience or control of it all.

“Remember how Jean went nuts when the Phoenix came down? How utterly controlled Scott is at all times because his eyes are so damn dangerous? Same damn thing!

“We’re going to pace things out and you’re going to learn control and applications at the speed of a normal person... but that huge bloody Core you’ve got means you’re still going to be able to learn faster, because you’ve got Reserves that normal people can only dream about, you just have to learn how to use them correctly.

“You ready to do that, Mr. Drake? Oh, and be able to go to a normal school, and not train to be a mutant supersoldier while you’re at it?”

His face brightened. “Oh, I am so ready for that!” he agreed hastily.

------

The rest of the assessment went pretty well. I went over possible Psionic paths for him to explore and go down, in keeping with both his natural talents and expanding beyond them. There were a great number of Disciplines that would apply to his natural powers, and so were basically uncapped in potential.

Growing beyond just Ice couldn’t be anything but helpful to the Iceman, however...