Aberrant: Children of Quantum Fire - [Interlude] Walking a Path Together [Fin]

[Dan Hawkins]

"When you came to call asking for access to The Island, I never expected it was for this Daniel." Anna DeVries looked at her former employee, and in many ways, her accomplice in a number of endeavors that nearly got them all killed.

They stood on a small Island off the cost of South Africa in the Atlantic. It had been carefully hidden, There but not there, and served as the private training grounds of DeVries most powerful novas. Once The destructive power had become an issue at the regular training grounds, This Island had been purchased quietly, and isolated.

Dan had trained here often with Long and Cade, and even Mary at one point, when she asked to see his real power. The acess was restricted, requiring Anna's permission, though a handful of others could use it freely. Dan was one of these, but all the same, he didlike to stay on her good side. She had an army of novas on her payroll, some of which made his not inconsiderable power look tame.

"It's going to be just the two of you, Alot of the others have gone, or are out on contracts right now. Some never come here, will you be alright?"

"Of Course, She's one of Shen's pupils."

He nodded. "She's stronger than me isn't she?"

"She's, "difficult" to read Daniel. I really really don't know. Harden your resolve though, She and her two sisters are beauties that in the coming years, well even Bombshell will have stiff competition."

"I see. Thanks for the heads up. I've met Coraline already, hence this request. Perhaps I'll meet the others."

"I can arrange it, later."

She nodded and vanished, Leaving Dan alone on the Island, at the sole standing structure there, a six bedroom home with all the conventional amenities, and a large number of unconventional ones.

[Karren Gaunt]

And then, not too much longer later, in silence and in light, Coraline dropped out of the sky decelerating from a blistering 189,000 kilometers an hour to a smooth, graceful halt a mere handful of meters away. The angel of light became became flesh and bone, hovering there a few inches above the surface of the island, white-on-black eyes taking in everything around and expression serene with good expectations. She bowed lighly, right fist planted in her left palm, wind rustling her black-and-yellow patterned sundress, features framed by blonde hair.

"Sifu Hawkins, please allow me to thank you again for being willing to teach me again. I was not expecting to encounter another Qi Meng practioner before Uncle Shen emerged from his valley with my Sister and her boyfriend. It was very nice," she intoned warmly, the ghost of a smile on her face, hoping that the nervousness she felt inside wasn't too obvious. He was right in their previous conversation. It *would* have been better to do this in full seclusion and focus on nothing but the katas, but she could only do what she could do, given her responsibilities.

[Dan Hawkins]

"To the Heart of the matter then. Shen is training others, for your own reasons, you decided to leave before you finished. Normally I would ask exactly what is so important, but I already know."

He nodded. "I will ask this. Why do you feel it is your personal responsibility to do what you have done? Think before you answer, why is this so important that you risk never knowing His way. I see very little use in walking this path for you, and What I've observed tells me it will be a difficult one for you to walk. Do you wish to learn because he wanted you to, or because you truly wish to?"

They seemed simple questions, but they held great importance. He wanted her to understand how this would be difficult.

His eyes and body language betrayed nothing.

[Karren Gaunt]

Interesting. The same questions Mrs. Chang had asked her. Sometimes wisdom truly was the same no matter how different the source. That small observation was enough to begin ordering her thoughts, to stert her down a track of conversation she could have faith in not completely embarassing herself with.

"I've grown up seeing the price of Node Abuse everytime I look a mirror, in the unhappiness it caused my Mother everytime she had to deal with people outside of our family, in the sometimes deadly burdens it forces on the children of the tainted when they've done nothing wrong to deserve such an inheritance. I know that if I were to indulge in the same behavior as the Teragen do, I would only add to the problems my children will inherit someday, far down the line when the world is better, when I am ready. I refuse to increase that burden on them, and if I can spend part of my life teaching others to control their own taint, control my own taint... It feels right. Helping to give others another option in maintaining their physical and mental health."

The young metamorph took in a deep breath, chorus resolute as she gestured at everything with both arms, "Maybe those aren't good reasons. Maybe the fact Uncle Shen trusts me enough to try and teach me is combining with a childish fear of taint I'll someday outgrow. But for now, I want to try and walk the path. To see if I can. To see if I want to. Out in the wide, confusing world I've only just started embracing."

[Dan Hawkins]

Dan looked at her. "That all sounds noble Coraline. But to truly do as you wish to do, you will need to Master all aspects of this path Coraline. It took two years of intensive training for me, and sacrifices I still feel even now."

"You are unsure still, and that worries me. Still, Shen saw promise enough to teach you, I can not deny that, and as such I will train you in all you wish to know, His vision reaches far further and broader than mine."

He nodded, walking off, and taking a stance identical to the beginning of the first kata. "Show me what he has taught you."

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline nodded and began, slipping into the Now and forgeting everything save what she was doing, the quantum tick of the universe, and the flow of her own chi with every movement, every exspansion and contraction of her muscles beneath her skin. Action, input, and reaction became the same thoughtless graceful process, the young metamorph's mind a filter for everything she was seeing and hearing. Meditation through movement as she shifted through warm ups and stretches into graceful mock blocks, kicks, and shoves as in-line with her measured breathing and movements that gave a hint as to the raw damage those blows could deal through finese and not any measure of superhuman strength. Everything was controlled, Coraline the fulcrim of her world, and while far from immovable, if made to move against her desire, she would move in the direction she wanted to move nine times out of ten.

She exhaled out of the end of a kata, bringing her hands together, and blinking serenely, "I can show you the Focusing Trance Kata, Sifu Hawkins, if you desire."

[Dan Hawkins]

"Is that all that you know? What I wish to gauge is exactly what you have been taught Coraline. Show me in the way you feel best exemplifies this."

He himself was already going through the Kata slowly, almost hypnotically.

[Karren Gaunt]

"That, and the principles of Running Water Camuflage," she stated with a simple, slightly self-depreciating smile on her lips, as she slipped into the deceptively short and understated movements of her one technique that allowed her to manipulate the energies on the other side of her quantum, hands coming around and together with a slight twisting, flitting thoughts turning inwards into her own self-control, her own balance as a nova within herself, quantum and chi.

There was, of course, no matching surge in her Node, the sick burning of forcing more from herself than her body and powers were prepared to give, but the soothing *other* energies flowed down her arms and into hands, coming together in a blossoming of sheer human energy that brought a flush to Coraline's cheeks, blooming back up her spine and along her morphic field before disipating out from her skin like a storm of windblown flower petals.

[Dan Hawkins]

Dan watched her intently wondering if he'd not agreed to do something that might be much harder than it seemed.

"Your form there is almost perfect, as though you watched Shen intently and memorized every detail."

[Karren Gaunt]

"Thank you, Sifu Hawkins. I am trying to do my best with the gifts I have and had months of nothing to do except focus on my training in an enclosed valley," she answered softly, something in her manner giving the impression that the enclosure, the anchoring to one spot and away from the sky, was one of the most difficult things about it all.

Coraline's gaze took in Dan, betraying for a moment how deeply she can see, how much more than a baseline she was aware of even in a glance. "That is, if that is not a problem, and there is some correction I need to do in my daily practises," she further volunteered, chorus soft and open to any critism she might deserve.

[Dan Hawkins]

"How well do you know yourself Coraline? Do you know your limits? How far, how fast, how deeply you will allow yourself to go?" He continued through his own movements.

"Beyond those questions, do you understand why you have those limits, how they came to be, and how absolute they truly are." These were things Shen once asked him many years ago.

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline resumed her movement, flowing through another Qi Meng Kata, chorus soft and composed, voice somber with long thought and the sometimes unpleasant conclusions that came with such introspection.

"I am myself, Coraline Boehm, a Second Generation Nova born of Robert and Anne Boehm and raised by Shen after the death of my parents. They were not perfect. I am not perfect. And however much much power I wield through my Node, my speed and my ability to adapt and my vision of the world, I am limited by my ability to understand what I see so that when I act, I act to the betterment of the world around me and those I want to protect. I will sacrifice everything I have to protect my family and those who can not protect themselves, but I understand I am blessed enough in my friends and family that I don't have to be self-destructive helping others. Allowed to be human in every sense of the word along the way."

"I am a work in progress, coming from a mindset of fear and knowing that things are going to get worse before they get better, but I am prepared to face those challenges. To do my best to try and make the world better, make myself a better person. To hope and try for the best despite everything that has happened which makes me want to see only the worst."

She sucked in a breath, bringing herself still again, a fragile smile on her lips like a sunrise on a foggy day, content with her no doubt clusmy attempt to explain how she saw herself and her place in the world.

[Dan Hawkins]

"He spoke only as he drew o a close in the Kata. "You answer well, for one so young. Not everything I wish to know, but enough. "Do you know what it is to truly be human Coraline? Tell Me what is Human to you."

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline offered a final, sincere grin at Dan's aproval, glad her efforts had borne some fruit. Now for the hard part, voicing the other thought.

"Humans desire, Sifu Hawkins, and are aware that they desire. They use that desire and that self-awareness today to strive to gain more and be more tommorow than they had and were yesterday. The best humans, the truly human, desire to connect to others and are willing to sacrifice to make those connections. And together we build something better out of our mutual desires than we ever could alone."

Dan gave her a Look, the kind Uncle Shen did when she used too pat an answer to cover her uncertainty expressing herself on the fly, "And if they aren't 'the best humans'?"

She looked a little uncertain, betraying her less than polished manners, "Then... Then we have problems. Like Proteus and Aeon and the worst excesses of the Teragen. Or the issues my parents could have avoided if they had been able to trust more. And we try to fix them."

[Dan Hawkins]

"Fix the humans?" She'd left it unsaid, but her tone suggested that.

"Humanity must accepted wholly. One cannot separate the good from the bad, for all have the capacity to be both. Working hand in hand both parties may be enlightened, and that is part of this study. Balance the self, then bring balance to the world around you."

"This is not pacificsm, but knowing when to strike decisively, and where. Sometimes one must do nothing, because any other choice would bring great disharmony. Aeon acted as it saw fit to protect humanity. I know Shen has shown you instances where their action is well founded, horrors that validate their fears."

He shook his head. "All should not be judged for one, and one not judged by the actions of all."

"Do you have any baseline friends Coraline?"

[Karren Gaunt]

"...No."

The young metamorph's chorus was more than a little rueful as she was reminded how caught she had allowed herself in projects other than bonding with baselines, "But I'm working on it. When I can. Between everything else I need to do and trying to put together a good few good ideas for the next time we meet with Shaman, Starseed, and the others. It's... It's hard. I'm used to throwing suggestions into other people's plans, not come up with my own plans. And they have to be good plans because everything is so muddled and delicate by both baselines and novas. Like you said and I know it is. Node knows, I've had it pounded into my head enough."

She took a deep breath, awaiting his response hopefully.

[Dan Hawkins]

"Should I introduce you to some? Of course there's always those around for those modelling shoots you do for Anna. Take the time, it can prove worth it and yield dividends."

He smiled. " As far as plans go, we of the older generation are fit to guide and offer advice, but this is a problem i think It best to allow your generation to come to eterms with in your own way. My way is not for everyone, but I walk it for myself, and my daughter."

He nodded to her. "You must walk your own path as well Cora. "Though, I will show you what you wish to know of the path Shen blazed, that I walked with him, and that you wish to continue to walk, and perhaps, blaze your own path."

[Karren Gaunt]

"I shall spare more time to getting to know baselines. Hard as it is to find those who aren't imediately overwhelmed by my looks when I don't hide myself or put off by my 'otherness' when I shroud my apperance. Not that I should let the fact Novas are easier to be around limit me to only getting to know Novas, I know," Coraline answered before getting serious and nodding her head, "So how should we continue?"

[Dan Hawkins]

Dan walks abit away, and takes a widened stance, his legs set to be a strong anchor for the rest of his body. His arms are held wide palms out, and he looks to Cora. "This is perhaps as good a place as any. This Kata focuses your mind to the point that all painful, harmful things may be pruned away and shed, as is done with a prize bonzai. The attention to detail is great, each movement precise. perfect muscle control, breathing, and balance of the self are all aspects. I will run through it once, to show you, then take you step by step, before I have you follow through."

With that he began and true to his word, the movements were perfectly precise, his breathing perfectly in synch, and his eyes remained open, yet held the look of one gazing inward, not outward. With the final motion his hands came to rest before his heart, forming a small circle, and then they broke away as though releasing something from within, and his eyes regained their normal look.

His feet had never moved from the spot, though he had moved on his legs, and an intricate stationary dance few novas could do so easily, and make look so simple.

[Karren Gaunt]

The young metamorph followed his motions with her eyes and the senses that allowed her to perceive more than the merely visual, to the quantum and the energies beyond the quantum that lay at the heart of the art she was just learning to live with. She was reminded, in spirit, of the essays Mrs. Chang had given her access to to negate the effect of quantum social powers. Nothing was said though, patience and stillness shrouding her features as she waited for her turn to see the parts that made up the whole.

[Dan Hawkins]

"What did you see?" His manner seemed as Shen's for a moment, testing her always, always causing her to question what and how she saw things.

[Karren Gaunt]

"Regarding just yourself and the kata you just executed?" Coraline questioned with a smile, not really have words to express *everything* she saw, "Or would you like to know about the crashing of the waves on the coast, the animals burrowing through the dirt at our feet, and the movement of the clouds relative to each other and us? Everything could take awhile."

There was no flipancy in her tone, merely the matter-of-fact observation of someone who sensed so much more than a baseline and was wondering how much of an answer to give.

[Dan Hawkins]

He smiled. "I'd love to hear such an expansive account, but I believe it is you who is strapped for time. Simply tell me what you saw in my movements. That should be sufficient for our needs today."

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline nodded acknowledgement of that limitation, duties and responsibilties and one grim prophecy bearing down on her. "I saw a Nova in control of himself in a way few Novas can claim, a state of calm and introspection as you worked your chi through your mind and body. Nothing physical or quantum seemed to change when you released the energy, so I can only guess that the energy was applied to fix a mental problem like a compressed period of Tai Chi Chu'an meditation. I can replicate the movements and with them the changes in chi now that I know how to walk the Path, but without knowing the mental patterns of the kata, It'd be guesswork if I was doing it right," she answered serenely, blinking at him once she was done.

[Dan Hawkins]

"First you must open your mind. Find the trauma you wish to excise, then you must gather up every way it touches you."

He smiled, wondering what she would choose.

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline inhaled and focused inwards, zoning out all but the most important impressions from her senses. She dove past the most obvious of her troublesome memories, the day two silences amid violence and snapping branches shattered her egg shell of a world, to a day long before that, her first memory. The one that cast the mold for all the others before she met Uncle Shen and her new family.

The feel of an oaken cabin floor. The sound of her Mother humming over sizzling meat. The smell of dust after the rain. Love and peace and a young child's faultless expectation that such things would always be so. Thought without words to get in the way.

And then change. The birth of her understanding of the term Motherhunter.

The thud of her Father's booted feet hitting the ground outside, a slammed door and shouted words. Anger and urgency arising rapidly from confusion. Being swept up in her Mother's arms as flesh flexed and flowed around her like a cocoon and a whump of displaced air marked their lifting into the air. Her Father's chorus rising into a painful scream that shattered bone with pure resonance outside of her warm safe cocoon, the crack of bullets and a terrorizing grunt of pain as something made Mother jerk. Her own chorus breaking into a cry at wanting the badness to Go Away...

The young metamorph's breath hitched slightly, features flushing slightly. "I have the memory, Sifu Hawkins," she volunteered.

[Dan Hawkins]

"Look into every corner of yourself, feel the pain it causes, and gather it up. Every aspect of pain it causes, from every possible influence it has over you. Gather it all compress it, focus it."

[Karren Gaunt]

Coraline slipped into a living now, becoming a foci of her world without forethought or regret, an 'I Am' with one objective, understanding herself in context of herself and the memory, how it pushed and pulled the root of her being like a tangle in the skein of her thoughts.

It's negative aspects. The wrong turns of thought it had forced her down for too many years. The all-consuming paranoia. The reluctance to push past her difficulty dealing with Baselines. The all-too-easy turn to hate and anger.

It's positive aspects. A core of iron-hard courage forged from hardship. A first hand experience with the terror of her generation. An example of sacrifice and loyalty to others she could pay forward in their memory to prevent others from ever having to experience again.

She sucked in a breath and let it out, a whole body gesture from her head to her toes, subtle but very real.

[Dan Hawkins]

"Now the hard part. Let go."

"Disperse it forever to the firmament of the cosmos.. it is an anchor, holding you down, holding you back. cut yourself free of it, and all that ties you to it."

[Karren Gaunt]

Dan got Coraline's attention with that instruction, the beautiful young metamorph fixing him with long, considering gaze. "I don't understand. We learn from our trials, our mistakes. Forgetting them only robs us of the lessons that come with hard times. Or do you mean something else I've missed?"

Coraline thought quickly, not deeply, and it showed in the confused frown tweaking her lips downward.

[Dan Hawkins]

"That's true. But to shed this trauma, you must move beyond your feelings, release them and cut the bonds that bind this trauma to you.Do not forget these memories, but let them have no sway over your actions. Let simply be the past, held in memory, but not something that becomes an emotional influence over your life."

He nodded. "This isn't something that's easy. Especially if you choose something you base your life on, if the hurt is intrinsic to the path you've decided to walk. Still, that is the gift and curse of this style. It is all about balance. Shedding this trauma doesn't mean you forget, simply that it no longer holds sway over you."

[Karren Gaunt]

"I... Would you show me the motions of the kata again? I want to be sure I understand it correctly as I put the mental and physical portions of it together and practise on my own," she ventured after a slow nod, confessing softly, "This isn't something I'm going to get right the first or second or even tenth time, I think. I only stopped letting my fear tell me what to do all the time six months ago, and even now, I'm willing to fight so hard because I want to keep others from feeling the fear I fealt growing up, still feel deep down like a furnace. I suceed in acting despite it all more far more often than not these days, but it's still there, Sifu Hawkins."

[Dan Hawkins]

He nodded, once again taking the stance, and going through the entire kata without words. Once done, he looked to her. "I certainly didn't get it right out the gate. That fear that drives you, it will beome your greatest foe. You will act without truly thinking, believing you are doing something beneficial, but in reality, you won't be. I've been there. I've been scared like that."

"Every day I wonder if today is the day the past catches up with me, if the motherhunters find us again. In Tokyo,were it not for several witnesses, I'd have been branded a murderer for killing four operatives who came after Sonja and I. That was the first time Sonja saw me kill anything I wasn't going to cook for us." He looked down at her.

"I'd wanted nothing more in life than to spare her that." He sighed. "Leaving her on the Primus might seem a good idea, but there is no one close to her age, and so little for her to do. I have allies yes, but my most powerful ones are indisposed at the moment."

"Still, my fears do not rule me. I seek a better world for my daughter, for all future novas. I don't seek it because of fear, but because I wish to see it and know even if in some small way, I helped sheperd it."

"You know great sucess Cora, because you wield fantastic power. You and the siblings of yours I've met, all of you possess so much power. I may not get a real read on your power, but what I've heard, allows me to to put together a degree of your capabilities."

He nodded. "Have you considered that your actions could well result in the same sort of fear you have within you?"

[Karren Gaunt]

The young metamorph mirrored Dan in the Kata as he repeated it, a flawless replication of the motions and footwork carried out by the Elite. She listened to his speech before answering. "It could. If we're not careful. If we lose sight of the fact you save the world one person at a time. That's why I'm putting the team together the way I am, so we don't lose the trees for the forest the way Aeon has allowed itself to. All I can do to make a better tommorow is trust my instincts and be willing to listen to others who've proven trustworthy to me."

She smiled thinly, "That's all I can do to try and protect the ones I want to protect. So I do it."

[Dan Hawkins]

Still Cora, with mostly second generation novas, each of you possessing, or potentially possessing such power, Zeph and I are the only ones who are first generation, with any real frame of what being human means."

"He and I are by no means weak but are powerful novas, and I assume you also have Shen, Serenity, and possibly even Einherjar in this mix as well. Still no nova there is what could be called weak" He smiled,"That said I think come up with something that will help steer towards a better tomorrow."

He looked at her. "Or are you prepared to tell the people how it will be."

[Karren Gaunt]

"I'm hoping we won't need to. That once we get Aeon to back off, we'll be able to persuade the baselines that killing nova children for existing is a bad idea," She replied, chorus whisper soft, "If we can't... No. I'll think about that if it comes to it. Not before. It'd be defeatist to give up before we try to work something out. Exactly what my parents did, what so many Novas are doing. We have to be better than that."

[Dan Hawkins]

"We will be. Just do not try to force your beliefs upon them. Let humanity decide for itself. I believe that in the end they will surprise everyone."

He nodded. "What other ideas exactly do you have for how to go about this, in case, not of failure, but of setbacks?"

"I know there is more than a simple shadow war with Proteus going on."

[Karren Gaunt]

"I'm working on some ideas to share for the next meeting, but most of them boil down too run and hide, focus on our individual plans, and stay safe until our opponents get complacent again. The bigger the conspiracy, the more mistakes it has to make, I'm told and pray is correct," Coraline replied calmly, nodding once as she moved through the motions of the kata again, a living treasure in motion, chi flowing with the motions of her body beneath the masked smoke of her quantum furnace.

There was a silent expectation of critique in the young metamorph's gaze as she finished, both on her plan and her execution of the drill.

[Dan Hawkins]

"Only run if you must, it draws attention. Hide if you must, indeed, biding one's time is an excellent idea. They know you're about, but exactly where keeps them scrambling to cover things up, revealing their mistakes by their efforts."

He nodded. "Your movements are beautiful to watch, and yet I know your focus isn't solely on this endeavor. That is going to hinder you. You will master this with time and practice, and further training, you will learn all your Uncle and I have to teach you, if you wish to learn."

[Karren Gaunt]

"I am aware and thank you for your time and consideration," Coraline volunteered in warm rememberance, "I am considerably more focused on the katas during my late night and early morning practises. Even if those sessions tend to draw the involvement of the children we've rescued. I don't have the heart to turn them away. Uncle Shen first starting teaching me when I was curious what my sisters were doing with their late mornings. The first step in learning to not be a victim anymore."

She smiled like a sunrise, joy in that simple realization.