Back To School (Part Two)

I needed some goddamn answers, and at last check there was only one place where I could start to get them. The only issue was who had had to get them from.

I had never directly interacted with the Cuckoos. I never had a need to. We weren't on a team, we didn't have the same classes, and normally if I had need of a telepath I had one nearby who actually liked me, even if she was hard to understand sometimes.

...Well, I didn't know if the Cuckoos necessarily disliked me. I just automatically assumed everyone did until proven otherwise. We'd never really had the pleasure of engaging in any kind of extended conversation. Sure, they had been at my party, but that didn't mean anything. There had been alcohol and a chance to get laid. Plenty of reason for anyone to show up, even if they hated me.

The easiest way to find anyone in school was normally to just ask around, but since the student body was down to mere low double digits until the summer break ended, I had to do it the hard way; by looking around and thinking really hard. That was my tried and true strategy to locate telepaths. Eventually they would hear you and tell you to shut up, or tell you where they were.

Eventually, I got a ping that led me to a common area with a piano where I found the three sisters sitting around. One was watching TV, another was reading, and the third was playing the aforementioned piano.

Three gorgeous blonde triplets, identical in every way appearance-wise. They didn't even try to make it easy on anyone trying to tell them apart by dressing differently. If I shut my eyes for ten seconds to let them switch places, I wouldn't have been able to tell who went where.

...And I probably thought that loud enough for them to pick up on it. Great. Oh well. The worse they could do was tell me to buzz off, and so I approached them as casually as I could. I had no reason to be nervous. I just wanted to ask a question.

"Hey, girls," I said, stepping into the room where I moved over to the piano. I was jealous that one of them could play an instrument well. I never did get around to starting guitar lessons while I'd been back home. Maybe a piano would be more my speed?

"It isn't so hard," The Cuckoo sister at the piano commented as though I had been speaking out loud, "If you can do something like fly a jet, I'm certain you can figure out how to play a piano with lessons."

"Oh," I said, a little taken aback at getting my mind passively read. The three of them all together were supposed to be stronger than Miss Frost, so it wasn't a surprise, "I'll try and look into that when classes start up again. There has to be someone around willing to teach me how."

From the nearby couch, another of the Cuckoos set her book aside with a roll of her eyes, "Mindee, stop humoring him. We know why you're here, Bellamy," She said, apparently not amused at my attempts to small talk, "You want to ask us a question."

She was right, but I was confused when she didn't either turn me down or go into more detail, "...Do you know what that question is?" I asked, mentally marking the Cuckoo at the piano as Mindee. One down, two left to detail.

She frowned at me and shook her head, "No. We can't tell that much. You have very good psychic shielding," She seemed annoyed by this.

That sounded like a contradiction to me. As far as I was aware, they read me walking into the room, "Didn't you guys just read my mind a minute ago?" I asked.

"Yes, but these were thoughts you had at the surface. They weren't very hard to see, and you weren't trying to resist. Anything deeper though, and things get muddled."

The third Cuckoo who had been more focused on the TV than anything else reached out to swat at her book-reading sister, "Oh, Celeste. Don't be grumpy just because you can't see past the surface in his head. He does spend a lot of time with Blindfold. I wouldn't be surprised if he allows her to practice her telepathy on him."

I did. A lot. I was the only one on the team with the balls to. My only rule with Ruth was not to do anything in my head that she couldn't put back to normal, or that would end up with Eddie or Hisako putting me on Youtube.

"How personal," Mindee purred from her place at the piano, "You must trust her a lot to allow her access to your mind like that. Who knows what she could have you do with that kind of access?"

I didn't like that smile. The last thing I needed was more people trying to stir up shit, "How else is she gonna get any better if she doesn't work with someone?" I said before waving the whole thing off, "Besides, I'm fine. And as a side-effect, apparently you can't read the depths of my brain. I'd say that means it's worked out so far."

Celeste seemed to take this as a personal challenge, "Oh, we could still get to the bottom of your mind if we all tried at once. I'm not sure your psyche would survive the attempt though," She was absolutely a protégé of Miss Frost.

I slumped my shoulders in defeat. Getting turned into a vegetable just so the girls could prove a point wasn't my idea of fun, "Please don't. I've still got stuff to do today."

The third Cuckoo giggled at my powerless expense, "Oh, don't worry. Miss Frost wouldn't like it if we broke you."

Mindee reached over to pat me on the head. People always touched my head because of the hat, "Yes, yes, Phoebe is right... you're the new project. There are high hopes for you, you know."

No, I didn't know. Seriously, "You're kidding, right?" I asked, plopping down on a couch near two of the sisters. I wanted to hear more of this, "The last time I checked, Frost hates me, and Summers... I don't know, he 'nothings' me."

All of the Cuckoos turned to look at me, their eyes glowing a ghastly blue as they spoke in unison, "Are you telling psychics that they don't know what they've seen in others' heads?"

All of a sudden, I regretted sitting down. Goddamn Three-In-One. They were some seriously scary chicks when they wanted to be, "No, but the two people we're talking about are a psychic that could fight you off, and a guy that exclusively plows telepaths."

Their hive mind psychic intimidation thing faded away just like that. The wonders that having a solid point could do for you, "Well it's your right to be skeptical," Celeste said, "But we wouldn't lie to you. There's no point."

"I never said you would. I didn't think it either," I said with a cheeky grin, tapping at my own dome for emphasis. Hey, one of them laughed, "So, about that help I came for. I've prepared a payment in exchange for your help. I think you guys'll-."

"-You don't have to bribe us to ask a question, Bellamy," All three girls said as one, cutting me off.

I had to take a moment to rationalize that with my expectations. People who weren't close to me normally didn't help me just because they could, "Oh. Okay. Cool. Um... I'll be honest, I expected this to be a lot harder," As I rambled, all of the Cuckoos just sat, waiting for me to cut to the chase, "Ahem, well... I'm just looking for some information. Before I got here, there was some kind of riot," I would have been a fool to notice their faces fall, "If it's something you don't want to talk about..."

"No," Phoebe said, "It's... good that people don't forget about what happened that day."

This was a sensitive topic for them. Obviously. From what I'd heard, one of their sisters died during the riot, I tried to treat lightly, "Was there a telepath involved? Not you guys, I mean. I'm talking about a dude."

All of their faces twisted up in complete revulsion, "Quentin Quire," They all said with a disgusted shudder.

They didn't hesitate to give me a name. I'd hit a nerve. One that would give me what I wanted to know, "Who?"

All of the Cuckoos looked at each other before letting their feelings spill forth.

"A psychic. A telepath."

"A vile boy."

"His thoughts were disturbing, and so loud."

"The way he looked at us. At Sophie."

All three girls looked at each other before concluding their description of him, "Ew," They said in unison. I tried not to laugh. It wasn't a time for humor, even if that had been hilarious.

"Okay," I said, trying to wipe the smile off of my face and be serious, "So what happened to this guy?"

"He was on drugs. Very powerful drugs. They sent his powers into overdrive."

Okay, yeah. It didn't seem like a good idea to take mind-altering substances when your power revolved around your brain. That wasn't an intelligent move at all, "I'm guessing that didn't end well for him."

The Cuckoos all shook their heads as one before Celeste spoke, "His body couldn't handle it. None of the teachers or X-Men could stop it. His body was destroyed."

Phoebe picked up from there, "No one ever saw it. No one ever told the school what really happened to him. They say he died, but we can still hear him."

Aha! So it wasn't just me! That was a fine bit of info to have, "Where?"

"Down in Dr. McCoy's laboratory," Phoebe said.

A dead kid was still capable of thinking out loud enough for people like me and them to hear, "How? Do we have ghosts, or something?" In the grand scheme of things, that wouldn't have been so far-fetched, "...I mean, with everything else that happens around here, that wouldn't really surprise me, but in this case-."

Mindee cut me off before I could finish verbalizing my thought, "-We don't know. That area is in the sub-levels, off-limits to everyone except top staff," She said before tilting her head curiously, "But you have been inside of there before, haven't you?"

I had been. But I didn't remember seeing anything. To be fair, there had been a lot going on, "Uh, I was kind of busy trying not to get killed by the Danger Room and an alien at the time. And it was Dr. McCoy's lab. I had no idea of 90% of what I was looking at."

Besides, there had been plenty of psychic fuckery to go around that day. It would have been hard to pin it down to one source or another. More pressing things were afoot, and my attention was quickly turned to keeping the Earth from getting destroyed by Breakworld.

Celeste shrugged at my answer, "If what's happening with you is really such an issue, whatever is left of Quentin Quire is there."

Great. More stuff that I shouldn't have known about and couldn't get myself to without getting in trouble.