“Yes. I have a rather special Feat called Dauntless, which renders me immune to the effects of fear. Thus, I basically ignore Her. From the standpoint of a normal person, I am cheerfully and utterly insane. If I did not have the Feat, well, functioning in a normal world would be rather difficult, and I would not only be crazy, I’d be acting crazy, to boot!”
“So, your Focus is an outgrowth of... carrying this Pact around?” Emma Frost asked, still trying to grasp how someone could have that staring at them all the time.
“Oh, by no means! My Talent is to be Naturally Focused. I deliberately built on that aspect of my personality and simply brought it to unreasonably high levels. As a side effect, I can ignore the presence of my Patron, as opposed to being annoyed by Her, resenting Her, or anything else. If you can Concentrate high enough, you can literally change your own mind, after all, and the ability to focus has so much wide application I would be a fool not to play to my strengths.” I flicked a finger at the four girls. “I notice you four are not playing to yours.”
The four of them stiffened, including Irma, who had regained her chair. “What do you mean?” they asked, more or less in harmony.
“That. You are completely misusing the power of your natural Rapport.” I tilted my head and looked them all in the eyes at the same time. They all flinched back as I did it. “Do you not trust one another?” I asked them calmly.
“Of course we do!” they said together.
“Then why are you all doing the same things, learning the same things, and trying to be all the same? That implies that you don’t trust the others to give you the skills you need when you need them, and that you won’t share with one another.” They all blinked at me. “Have you never had someone explain to you the power of a hivemind or deep Rapport?”
“We can combine our power to greater effect if we work in unison!” they exclaimed as one.
“Anyone using a psychic Rapport can do the same thing,” I scoffed at them. “Walking around in a constant Rapport without effort is convenient, sure, but, mmm, let me make a more martial observation.
“You’re all one-style fighters, which is stupid. Oh sure, sure, you can work marvelously together in a team, but if one of you has a glaring weakness, you all have a glaring weakness. All you have is more muscle behind you. You have no additional versatility, skill, focus, or breadth.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous. The reason you have a Rapport is for strength AND for breadth. You’re ignoring the other half of the equation.
“In a psychic Rapport, for instance, Dean Frost could wield Dean Kwannon’s telekinetic powers. Do you think that might be useful in a fight? Dean Kwannon could employ some of Dean Frost’s more advanced telepathic techniques. Do you think either of them is weaker for it?”
The foursome looked a bit startled at that.
“I get where you are coming from. You have restrictions on how far you can advance because of your origins, so you are working in resonance to make yourself glass cannons, and have a punch above your level.
“That’s nice, but you’re in natural Rapport. Reinforcing the same skills is absolutely stupid, when one minute you could all be telekinetics tossing people around, the next biomorphs beating them up in combat, the third clairvoyants looking across time and space, and in the last coming back to telepathy.
“Indeed, since you’ve inherited Miss Frost’s natural telepathy, the very last thing you should be devoting your Levels to is telepathy. You should be diversifying up the kazoo to give your Rapport an amount of depth and versatility no single Psion can match.”
“But... if we do that, we will never catch up to Miss Frost!” Phoebe protested, all of them looking at Emma.
I just pointed at Emma. “And if she joins the gestalt?” I asked calmly, and all of them pursed their lips. “Like I said, you don’t trust one another. She’s already got all the telepathic stuff cleared up. Yes, yes, you’re all natural telepaths, wonderful, but even within telepathy you could be specializing in different things. One of you could be a specialist attacker, one a specialist defender, one a specialist communicator, and one a specialist in mind-reading and deep probes.
“Guess what? When you link up, you’re all specialists in everything.
“You can use the same thing with anything and everything. One of you learn how to fix cars. One of you go learn about electrical systems. One of you go learn some carpentry. One of you do some tool and die work.
“Get together, go modify a vehicle.
“Learn to kick, to defend, to push, to take down. Come together, you’re a master martial artist.
“Learn a guitar, learn the bass, learn the drum, learn to sing. Come together, four-part super band that can swap the microphone, do solos in concert, and make people cry.
“Your way is you all learning how to sing, but none of you can dance. It’s ridiculous.”
“But how do we do that?” Celeste asked, wide-eyed.
“Drop out of Rapport and do different things. Be your own people. Come back, and share yourself with the others. Trust.” I shrugged. “Right now, there’s so little trust you’re all forcing one another to do everything the same. It’s depressing to see, and no doubt you’re all a little shameful to have to be forced and forcing one another all into the same holes.” I pointed at Dean Frost, who was listening to me in some shock. “She’s a unique person. Why can’t you be?
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“Imagine, if you will, that you could create duplicates of yourselves. Would you insist on all your duplicates being exactly like you?” I looked at each of them archly, my eyes going up and down them, and they all blushed hotly as they stiffened. “Yet that is exactly what you are trying to do. I would personally send all my duplicates out to be very, very different, so when they came back to me, I would have all these wonderful experiences and knowledge and skills that I don’t have time to develop on my own.
“Instead, you are trying to make robots out of one another. You need to stop that shit right now. It is reprehensible behavior, it is insulting and controlling of one another, and worst of all, it is neither efficient nor pragmatic, benefiting exactly none of you whatsoever, and that includes Dean Frost.
“And before you whine, moan, and complain about your natural Rapport, remember that at your core, you’re all the same. Everything you have shared up to a certain point is the same. When you enter a new Rapport, you always start at the point you have diverged, and you flow together.
“If the different streams are longer and more diverse, guess what? That just means you experienced more, and you grow more.
“You need to get away from one another, then come back together, then get away from one another. You need to do different things with different people, grow in completely different ways, and then come back and share them together. That is the way to strength.
“Trying to walk down a single road that Dean Frost has already tread for you is stupid. She can learn plenty from you. Do you think she has done everything there is to do in life? Do you think she hasn’t had dreams that do not involve being a teacher, being something more than a telepath, pursuing a different life?
“Everybody does. While it is an honorable thing for you to trail after her... there’s no need.
“Learn some essentials, and then fly away in all directions. Do the things she can’t do, couldn’t do, won’t do, and then come back and share, and grow.
“You’re telepaths. You can link your minds, and you can change your minds.”
I let them think about that as I turned back to Emma Frost. “Have they been giving you problems with your telepathic lessons?” I asked archly.
“Well... they fight me on the necessity of what to learn and why. They want to skip past the essentials to more complex skills they can use together.”
“Teenagers. Give me the end tech, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll just buy another one rather than fix it!” I glanced at them. “Except it’s their brains we’re talking about. Useless except when in Rapport is useless. I can think of twelve different ways to blow their Rapport apart, and three of them would probably kill them with the feedback from their own bond.
“If it wasn’t Kwannon, they’d have the enthusiasm of limp dishrags when using their mindblades, too.”
Emma’s mouth quirked up despite herself. “Trust issues?” she hazarded.
“They are angry and resentful of one another, and tossing it on everyone else, yeah.” The Cuckoos were all paling together. “Did you ever work up a Leveling Schema for them, or have they been fighting you all the way on that, too?”
“Well...” her eyes slid sideways.
“Gods and Totems! They are going to fuck up their entire lives just because they resent one another so godsdamned much?” I stabbed my finger at the four of them. “Mindblades out, now! Get out of that damn Rapport!”
There was a snap as all four daggers materialized. “Now, you four will pay attention and you will take notes! If your brains are too dumb by themselves, Dean Frost will be taking them for you!” They all blushed again.
“You are clones. You know you are clones. There is nothing damn wrong with being a clone. The problem is with the Hellsdamned bastard who grew you mechanically, because it affected all of you.
“You know this, and this is not news. I am not judging you, and I am not calling you defective. I am very pissed at the person who couldn’t let you be born like a normal child and ensure you could grow up to be a Twenty, but life’s a pisser, so piss back on it!
“Do you understand me?” The metal table protested under my finger, and they all piped up that they did, tensing once again.
“You will never be able to get past Six without a freaking miracle... but we live in a world where miracles happen. If you are relying on that miracle, you are bloody stooopid. You want to make the most of your lives, you do so here, now, or you fuck up the rest of them. Are you planning to commit suicide anytime soon?” I demanded of them, eyes starting to crackle again, and they all hurriedly denied me.
“Then it’s time you started bloody trusting one another to do what is best for all of you! If you can’t trust one another to do that, then never, ever go into Rapport again, and I can make damn sure that happens, too.” All of their eyes went wide. “Yes. I can make it so you never have to enter this little coercion concert you have going on again, so that you will always be you, and nobody else. How do you like that?”
And there it was. The spark, the thought that they could truly be unique, and not even their sisters could dictate anything to them. Themselves, their choices...
“Your Rapport is a powerful godsdamned weapon. Leaving it sitting on the ground is a total and complete waste,” I informed them, waiting, and they all nodded hesitantly. “But it is a weapon that needs all four of you to lift, and guess what? The stronger the four of you are, the heavier and stronger that weapon is, and the more barrels it has to bring into play.”
I waved my hand, and a row of four columns came up in holo. “This is you.”
The Assay was brutally truthful. They probably Assayed themselves, but there they were, side by side, and there was only one difference between them... their names.
========
Sophie, Irma, Celeste and Phoebe, the Cuckoos of Cynosure, the White Princesses of Cynosure
Female Mutant Vatted Human/1 (Telepath)
Vizard/1; Psion/2 (Telepathy)
Strength: (8) 7
Dexterity: 15
Constitution: 12
Intelligence: 13
Wisdom: 14
Charisma: 17
Notable Talents/Traits: Domineering Telepath; Secondary Mutation (latent)
Mutant Telepath Template: Manifest Telepathy
---Latent Secondary Mutation: Diamond Form (emotionless)
=========
“This is Dean Frost.” I brought her up next to them, and their faces all went long, as to be expected of Two’s seeing a Twelve. I left off her Obsession deliberately.
================
Emma Frost, the White Queen of Cynosure
Female Mutant Human/2 (Telepath)
Scout/4; Psion/12 (Telepathy); Mindblade/4
Strength: 8->11
Dexterity: 15->17
Constitution: 12->15
Intelligence: 13->17
Wisdom: 14->17
Charisma: 17->23
Notable Talents/Traits: Domineering Telepath, Devoted Teacher; Secondary Mutation
Mutant Telepath Template: Manifest Telepathy
---Secondary Mutation: Diamond Form (emotionless)
===============