Acknowledgements: As always, first round goes to my editor, Phrykyh, for his usual dissection of anything I do. Also, thanks to Frito and Threnody for letting me know that my descriptions work on both sides of the facts.

Questing
X-Men/Mage: The Ascension

a Matt Bowyer production

Chapter 6
 

“First off, what I’m going to say is going to sound crazy. It’s going to sound like I’m completely out of my mind and you’ve become the unwilling and unwitting audience. But that’s not the case. I couldn’t make this shit up on a five-shot NyQuil bender. Just trust me on this. Ian, Margaret, and myself? We’re different. We’re not different in the way you guys are, but we’re not the same as anyone else. We’re still human, but in a way, we’re a little... more. I’m going to explain all this, so just bear with me.”

“I imagine that right now you're feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole.”

“What?“

“Sorry. Continue.”

“...right. Anyway.” 

Alexander Pratte turned back to the six men seated around the conference table in the Xavier Institute of Higher Learning’s sub-basement, ignoring the smug grin on Ian’s face. “There’s a lot of words for what we are “

Ian broke in. “Assholes, bastards, criminals, pedophi“

“But the term in the vernacular is ‘mage,’” Alexander finished, cutting Ian off with a harsh glare.

“A ‘mage,’” Scott said, leaning back in the chair at the head of the table. “What exactly is a mage, by your definition?”

“Have you ever had a lucid dream, Scott?”

Scott raised an eyebrow. “A lucid dream?”

“Have you ever had a dream, Scott, that you were so sure was real?” Ian asked, leaning across the table dramatically. “What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?” 

Warren and Bobby exchanged a glance.

Alexander rolled his eyes. “It’s sort of like that. In a lucid dream, you gain control over your dream, and you can effectively control every aspect of it. For lack of a better term, you are the god, the creator, in that world.

“We live that dream.”

“Hold on a sec,” Bobby said, wrinkling his forehead. “You’re gods?”

Alexander grinned. “Not quite. If the three of us were gods, don’t you think we could get by without your help?” 

He started pacing again. “Mages have the power to alter the fabric of reality. We can do anything, theoretically. I could make this table turn from black to orange, or I could turn you all into little frogs. The possibilities are literally infinite.”

Warren shifted in his seat. “You said ‘theoretically.’”

“Let’s go back to the dream theory. Let’s say this,” he waved his arms around to indicate everything around him, “is actually just a dream. One big, collective, shared dream. Ian, Margaret, and I are lucid dreamers, with the ability to change and form this dream, to make things happen that shouldn’t be able to happen.

“The other five-point-five billion people? They’re dreaming too, but they’re not lucid dreamers. But combined, they almost are. This entire dream becomes the reality, and as they get stronger, we become more and more fenced in.”

“What Alexander’s trying to say,” Margaret said, rising from her chair, “is a little confusing. Reality itself keeps us from becoming gods, in that sense.”

Alexander nodded. "Exactly. I've read that once upon a time, back in the time of Merlin and Lancelot and Arthur, people were a simpler, more superstitious lot. Back then, people believed in magic. Being a mage was a simple thing, in those simpler times, because reality shapes around the beliefs of the people."

Ian grinned. “That’s more or less how things were. Big explosion off on the horizon? Oh, just one of Merlin’s apprentices again, the little scamp. The King is still alive after a hundred and forty-seven years? Some crazy enchantment of that old wiggy wizard, Merlin. Three-headed dogs running backwards and spitting flame? Well, that was probably Satan.”

Alexander stared at Ian as if he’d sprouted a tail. Ian smiled, and then resumed fiddling with the ends of his sleeves.

Alexander shook his head once, and turned back to the group. “Anyway. Nowadays, no one, save a very select few, believes in magic. Reality, then, has basically edited magic out. We’re still here; it’s not like reality is going to edit US out. It just makes our lives a little harder.”

“So how are you not gods?” Bobby asked. “I’m not really sure on that.”

Alexander folded his arms across his chest and stared up at the ceiling. “How best to explain this...”

Ian got up from his chair and nonchalantly bumped Alexander to the side with his shoulder. “It all comes down to bullshit, really.”

“Bullshit?” Remy asked, raising both eyebrows.

“Bullshit,” Ian confirmed with a nod. “Back when knights spent their Happy Hours saving damsels in distress, a mage such as myself could fling out a fireball and be perfectly happy about it. No problem at all. You could ask him why, and he could just mumble off some stupid rant about dragons and evil spirits and cleansing, and you’d smack him with a sword and be on your way, no two ways about it.

“If I fired off a fireball in the center of Times Square, things would play out a little differently.”

Warren chuckled. “You’d be beaten within an inch of your life by the NYPD.”

Ian whirled to face him. “You’re absolutely right. My brains would be mixed in with the oatmeal at the ghetto elementary schools. But that’s not my point. The point IS that I probably couldn’t do it in the first place. Reality would bitchslap me and laugh in my face.”

As he talked, Ian glanced from one confused pair of eyes to the next. “Different situation. Let’s say that there are some Bad People hiding off in a warehouse and I want to blow them up. I’ve got the power to. But I can’t just point my finger at them and make them blow up.”

“Why not?” Scott asked. “You’ve certainly made it sound like you can.”

“Working my way there, Boss-Man. I can’t just make them explode, because it couldn’t happen normally. Reality would stop me, because such a thing isn’t possible. Sure, I’ve got some pretty phenomenal powers, but reality’s got over five and a half billion minds fueling it. I’d get my ass kicked.”

“So you couldn’t do it, even though you have the ability to,” Scott replied.

“Oh, no. I can do it. I just can’t be really showy with it. You’ve got to work within the system. Granted, I can’t just point in the room and make it blow up, just like that, without suffering some serious consequences. But if a gas line were to give out, and something were to spark that off...” Ian grinned maliciously. “Kaboom.”

Alexander grinned despite himself. “That’s about how it works. We can do almost anything, but we’ve got to do it within the constraints of reality. In the case of an emergency, we can go outside the boundaries, but that tends to lead to bad things in the long run.”

“Like your trick with the bullet,” Bobby said, sitting up.

“Exactly. That, obviously, is impossible by reality’s standards. And a bad idea. If I made a practice out of that, I'd have a pretty short life. You learn to keep things on the tame end really fast in this world.”

“What happens if you go overboard?” Warren asked.

“Reality fights back, basically. It doesn’t like us bending it so much, and if we do it too much, it sorta snaps back into place. Sometimes it just kicks our asses, and we can’t do anything to stop it. One of the coined terms for it is ‘Paradox.’”

“So there is a drawback to your power. Most intriguing,” Hank McCoy mused, leaning back in the high-backed chair. “Tell me. When did this first become evident to you? When did you discover these abilities?”

Alexander regarded the blue-furred scientist for a moment. Scott had introduced Dr. McCoy upon the mages’ arrival, and had been adamant on the fact that he would be helpful in the meeting. So far, Hank had been scribbling notes down in a small notebook for the entire time, never even looking up. 

Now, though, the doctor’s blue eyes were fixed on Alexander’s, with a bemused grin on his face. “Medical curiosity, you understand.”

“Right. When was it, around thirteen, fourteen years old?” he asked, turning back to Ian and Alexander.

“I was thirteen,” Margaret said. “Remember? The incident in gym?”

Ian snickered suddenly. “Classic stuff, that. I was... twelve? Yeah. I started having all those weird dreams, and then blew up a barn.”

Alexander regarded Ian flatly, and then looked back to Hank. “I was thirteen. We got them all around the same time, and the same age. Is that notable?”

“Could be, my young friend. It never hurts to ask, you now,” Hank leaned forward and dove into his notebook again.

Ian clasped his hands together and looked around the room. “I know what you're thinking, 'cause right now I'm thinking the same thing. Actually, I've been thinking it ever since I got here. Why, oh why, didn't I take the BLUE pill?”

“Was more t’inking along de lines of takin’ more den just de blue pill, really...” Remy trailed off, lighting a cigarette. 

“Where are the three of you from?” Scott asked, leaning forward across the table. “We don’t know a whole lot about you.”

Ian sat down in his chair and propped his feet up on the table, ignoring the furious glances Warren shot him. “Well, I can’t speak for Alex and Margaret, but I hail from a little town in western Virginia called Verona. One horse town, meaning that it had one horse by the offramp. I lived there until I was nine, I believe, and then I moved to New York to live with my aunt and uncle. I switched around schools for a little while until I ended up where these two were, the Clarkson School, and then all this started to happen.”

Margaret spoke next. “Take his story, change Verona to Asbury in New Jersey, and his aunt and uncle to my grandparents. Same age.”

“I’ve been a New York resident most of my life,” Alexander said. “I was born in Connecticut, and then moved to New York when I was only three. We’ve all known each other for the majority of our lives, now.”

“You don’t have a New York accent, though,” Bobby pointed out, a hint of suspicion in the words. “Why’s that?”

“This is the first week the three of us have been in New York since...?” Alexander trailed off, looking at Ian and Margaret for help.

Ian held up a finger for silence, and swung his legs down off the table. After a moment of digging around inside his pockets, he produced a Palm Pilot and fiddled with it for another few moments.

“September 9, 1999,” Ian finally responded, proudly flicking the Palm Pilot off and letting it vanish down into his pockets. “For the MTV Video Music Awards. I wanted to see Chris Rock.”

“We’ve been traveling a lot for the last six or seven years,” Alexander cut in. “I imagine most of you have lost your accents over time.”

“No, some of our number appear to be remarkably resilient when it comes down to that. Wouldn’t you agree, Remy?” Hank asked, smiling sweetly across the table.

Remy flicked cigarette ashes back at him.

“Are you the only mages around now?” Warren asked. “You said they were more plentiful in the Middle Ages, but a lot of your number certainly died out in the Renaissance. Like you said, no one throws fireballs around in Times Square.”

Alexander grinned darkly. “Mr. Worthington, you have -no- idea.”