Oh Danny Boy

[Ashlie Minamida]

True to her word, Ashlie is ready and waiting by the time her prognosticated 40 minutes are up. Six flat and innocuous panels are set up, one on each wall and two on floor and ceiling, each pair facing each other and creating an intersecting point in the room. Wires run from each of them and combine into one throng that runs to a mobile console on the table, screen flipped up on what almost seems reminiscent of a very early laptop. But probably with exponentially more processing power. Next to it a jet-injector and numerous ampules filled with a light-blue liquid that shimmers where the light hits it.

[Samantha McManus]

"It'll... all get cleaned up?" She says sheepishly off to the side to Miriam.

[Will Stanton]

"And you'll have a convenient dumping ground...should this go off without a hitch."

A quartet of Wills had come up from the Point for the process, to make sure things worked initially.

"This seems....strangely technological? What exactly is the procedure you've cooked up, Headmistress?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"This is purely to assist our resident telepaths. Cerebra doesn't just amplify the reception of thought patterns, it pre-parses them to help the user make more sense of the hugely increased amount of input. Distinguishes individual brainwaves, mostly. This will do a similar thing except I have looped in the algorithm we trained on, erh, hackey-sack you in order to sort all the disparate aspects of yourself so they won't overwhelm Samantha and Miss Bell."

"Think of it as a filter to give them a chance to set this in motion with a handful of you first."

[Miriam Bell]

"Cold opening." Miriam says, pushing herself off of the wall she'd been leaning against. "Or a dress rehearsal."

[Will Stanton]

"Well, if something starts going wrong, cut it immediately. I'm not going to have anyone get hurt over me here," one of the Will said, nodding.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"We'll stay safe." she promises, though she suspects even Miss Bell might be willing to put herself at some risk for the sake of Will. For all the trouble the shapeshifter has gotten into - through little fault of their own usually - people do seem to rally around him and tend to have their lifes bettered for it.

"Whenever you're ready." she says and with a couple button presses a faint electrical hum fills the room.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam, holding the Book of Will in one hand, blinks. "Is this what Cerebra is like?" she asks, holding up one hand and waving it through the air in front of her. Physically there's no difference but somehow the air feels thicker to her and where her hand passes it's almost as if she's wiping the fog of a window and revealing a blurry streak of landscape, somehow visible to all in the room regardless of the angle they're standing at. Dense woods and sprawling emerald hills that stretch into the distance, ravens circling in the air. Sam. Adjacent yet somehow cast in night, a twisting tower of amalgamated architecture rises tall enough it's silhouette cuts across a bright moon. It's dizzying to look on her own mind like this, like she's in two places at once. She blinks and notes the odd one out. Far above the landscape a structure bristling with antennae and solar panels drifts through the sky, navigational lights blinking, but unlike the rest it's hard to make out details. While distance seems to matter little in observing the woods or the tower, the satellite station is too far away somehow.

Looking over at the four Wills they're in the same spot in reality as they are when looking through Miriam's 'window' and as if looking at them prompts something the window widens until all of them, Sam, the four Wills, Miriam and Ashlie are standing in the landscape between tower and woods. Unlike the 'normal' telepathic connection that often feels very floaty and dreamlike, they can feel the solid ground beneath their feet, hear the rustling of leaves from the edge of the woods and a cool wind blowing down from the tower.

The book in Miriam's hand however is missing. Instead another slice of landscape is filled with Wills. Hundreds upon hundreds of them crammed together, wrapped with long bands of paper resembling ofuda but with non-sense scribbled on them. Haphazardly bound together with no regards for comfort or personal space the paper might as well be steel with how it cinches around them, bends them into odd poses and binds them to one another. Not an inch of space is left in the bound sea of Wills that stretches out to the horizon.

[Samantha McManus]

"It's usually quite a bit... wetter?" She says, looking around and getting a sense for everything.

[Will Stanton]

The Wills were trussed up, arms and legs bent at improbable, impossible angles by the paper bindings. Some had been compacted down nearly into a ball, arms and legs bent and wrapped around them. Others were spread-eagled, cuffs around their wrists and ankles straining them to their utmost. Others saw one or more limbs twisted back against the joint; a marionette being pulled to its utmost limit. A few looked like they had been deliberately posed, their bodies contorted to be aesthetically pleasing. But as they stretched out over the horizon, they became more haphazardly done.

The bindings cut into flesh here and there, revealing the clay within as biceps and quads saw the paper digging tightly into the mass. They were mostly gagged, mouths stuffed with the bands of paper, preventing any real communication other than muffled grunts and moans. A great number of them were essentially blindfolded, as well -- or, at least were bound so tightly to their neighbors that there was no chance they could see out, faces pressed flush against the body of the closest Will to them. Each movement only entangled them further, effort merely serving to tighten the bonds around them.

They were all bound together. While each Will was an individual entity, the paper bindings linked up and tangled with one another, creating a chain. They were bound tightly together, this one's gag becoming that one's thigh cuff becoming another's chest band. They were pressed up into a mass of arms and legs, but they were each distinct individuals, chained together.

[Miriam Bell]

"Oh god, is that what we did...?" Miriam gasps as she looks out over the expanse of Wills.

[Will Stanton]

"...I've seen worse?" one of the Wills who had come along said, after a moment.

[Miriam Bell]

"Very reassuring I didn't accidentally set some kind of new record." she deadpans, but actually does seem a bit comforted by that fact. Or at least by Will taking this in stride.

[Samantha McManus]

"They said keeping them individual and defined wasn't what they wanted, once they went back into the vessel. So I guess it manifested as... well, that."

[Will Stanton]

"It might explain why they were unwilling to let anyone else in," Will suggested. "Above and beyond there just not being space."

[Miriam Bell]

"No, yeah, it... it makes sense. Just... I'm sorry. Let's get this sorted out. Ready to start putting together a cauldron?" she asks Sam.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Meanwhile Ashlie is looking around the landscape with a mixture of amazement and confusion. It's real, as far as all her senses tell her but the scope of it is staggering. And she can't help but wonder where exactly the imagery comes from as she cranes her neck to look at what is presumably supposed to be 'her'. Is it how Miriam Bell sees her? Her own creation? Some mixture, made to fit the overall panorama? There's no single satisfactory explanation and that bothers her as much as it intrigues.

[Samantha McManus]

"Aye, some memories there that I think you can work with."

One of the flock comes winging over with a length of red ribbon in its beak, carrying the feeling of a moment of fumbling in darkness, of blood and clay, a vessel to store a little light. It resonates with Will's side of that moment of pain, but also with later when he absorbed that same pot after regaining his powers.

"Kind of rhymes, aye?"

[Miriam Bell]

"So it does..." she says as she walks over towards the edge of the field of bound Wills. Of course, book bindings. Figures. She lets her power well up and whatever the head-mistress has done, she can feel a structure take shape. Around the three of them the walls of a gothic nightclub rise from the ground and through the open door they can see parts of Will's bindings unfurl into the purple velvet rope of a club entrance.

"Come then, it's opening night for..." she doesn't have to glance up behind her as she steps outside but she does anyway, eliciting a sigh at the bright neon letters emblazoned above the entrance. "The Melting Pot. Naturally."

[Samantha McManus]

"Could call it the Crucible, if you want to be more dramatic."

[Will Stanton]

"Have to get good and proper sloshed to deal with my bullshit, hrm?" one of the Wills joked, looking around the nightclub.

[Samantha McManus]

"I mean... it helps a bit."

[Miriam Bell]

"Will you two stop yapping and get to kettle-making before the crowd out there gets rowdy?" she says, though she can't quite keep the fondness out of her voice. Just a year ago standing at the intersection of four minds like this would have made Miriam recoil in fear and deflection. This almost gentle teasing actually feels reassuring compared to how easy it'd be for any one of them to walk up to and touch on anything truly hurtful. In response there's a slow shifting in the landscape as the jumbled tower of Miriam's mind seems to 'settle' a bit, losing height as disparate and skewed pieces of building flow into a bit more normal configuration of buildings near the bottom. It takes the entrance that previously sat several stories high on a long staircase down closer towards the ground and the surrounding architecture.

Miriam tries her best not to actively acknowledge her mindscape losing some of it's adverse and messy design.

[Samantha McManus]

"Alright, I'll start laying things down here, we'll see what of Will is drawn to it."

The crow lays the ribbon down on the bartop, apropos of where one would make a cocktail, or really any other concoction. Against all logic it lays in a perfect circle, and casts a shadow it couldn't possibly have, an outline Will would know from having absorbed the original.

[Will Stanton]

The four Wills who had entered the mindscape alongside Sam and Miriam walked over to the bar, intrigued by Sam's shadowplay.

"I will never get used to how the laws of physics work -- or don't work -- in these sorts of things," one said, poking the ribbon slightly.

[Narrator]

There's a flash of Sam reaching under her bandage, her hand coming back bloody. Working her blood into a clay pot. Then, suddenly, her fingers dart out for Will's wrist and draw more blood. An echo of a far away light. There's someone in the throng of Wills who experienced this. There's someone in the throng who was this pot.

[Will Stanton]

And here is where Sam was wrong. Not crushingly wrong, not overwhelmingly wrong, but where the basic differences in Sam's existence and Will's existence came into play.

Sam was, in a sense, three beings which made up one whole. Badb, Macha, and Nemain all had their own distinct attributes and characteristics, and it was only when they were combined and in balance that they were Sam (or, rather, the Morrigan, though the line between them was nebulous at best).

Will, though? Will was one being who became many. It wasn't that someone in the crowd had been the pot -- they all had been the pot. And even if that had happened post-mirror, then all of them would have remembered being the pot -- that was, after all, the point of them all coming together; distinct experiences and memories being connected in one, coherent whole. Sure, some of the aspects of Will currently out and about would have different opinions and affinities towards the pot, but it was still a shared experience between them all. They all were Will, after all.

And thus, it wasn't just one Will drawn towards the circle. All four of the free and unbound Wills were drawn in, eying the circle with different reactions -- curiosity, want, caution, skepticism. And the mass outside, still mostly bound together (for how many velvet ropes does one club need?) also squirmed and twisted.

They were all drawn to it, in their own fashion.

[Samantha McManus]

"I think we've got a bit of momentum we can work with here, Miriam. How do you want to go with it?"

[Miriam Bell]

"Let me see if I can find some that are more inclined to make up the cauldron itself." she says and once again pulls on the psi-field providing the raw sorting power to make sense of the crowd outside. It manifests in her hand as a touchpad with an infinitely scrolling guest-list on it. She pinches the screen to zoom out into constantly shifting and wobbling word-clouds. Only when she focuses on them does any kind of sensible meaning emerge. She finds one that seems to include all the ones preferring not just being inanimate shapes but maintaining them and settling into them indefinitely. They are, of course, all listed under the same name and the list, like all of them, in pretty much endless. Yet when she looks up and calls out "Will Stanton, Will Stanton and Will Stanton front of the line please!" it somehow addresses the exact ones she'd pulled up on her pad. She lifts the velvet rope and at the same time the bindings around the three Wills loosen and unravel.

[Will Stanton]

The three Wills Miriam had called out for staggered towards the front of the line. While some of the other Wills were still straining their aching muscles, this particular trio seemed to be fine despite being locked in what had to be a fairly unnatural position for quite some time -- the sort of stamina and persistence one needed, perhaps, if they were to stay in one shape and one form, immobilized for an indefinite period.

They looked around the nightclub slightly warily -- where Miriam's mind ended and someone else's began was hard to exactly fathom.

[Samantha McManus]

"Okay, I can agree those ones look right structural."

[Will Stanton]

"Flatterer," one of the Will's said, with a smile.

"I'm sure she says that to all carbides she meets," another joked.

[Miriam Bell]

"Of course they do. I picked them."

[Samantha McManus]

"Alright, I don't suppose anyone here is a bottom?"

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam lets out a not very flattering snort of a laugh. "Only most of them."

[Will Stanton]

Mild snickering.

"You just tell us what we need to do, and we'll get it done."

[Samantha McManus]

"I need one of you who can bear the weight of this, and the heat coming from below. I mean that in every possible sense. The other two of you are going to be held in tension, keeping everything in at the sides. It's going to want to push in all directions and there's heat there too, but nobody gets in or out but through the top."

[Will Stanton]

One of the Will's stepped up, cracking her knuckles.

"Nothing's unbreakable, as we found out recently, but they'll have to bring something tougher than hammers to get through me next time."

[Miriam Bell]

"One foundation and three for the cauldron, huh? Sound like we have the exact right amount of telepaths then." she says, stepping up behind the knuckle-cracking Will and putting her hands on her shoulders. The mental command feels different than normal, more substantial somehow. It helps that Miriam is physically pushing Will down and into shape. One arm and both legs thin out, bend, twist and curl into the legs of a cauldron stand. Miriam pushes Will's head down into her chest and out into a ring to hold the legs together, then further down into a shallow bowl close to the ground. Sturdy, reliable, always there for her despite her many misgivings. She molds the bands, winds them around each other to reinforce them and flare them out at the end until the shape is done.

Taking a deep breath she focuses on what comes next. Anger, passion, righteous indignation. The choices are myriad and she tries not to judge herself for any of them. Indulgences of hot blood, warm moments on a rooftop, hot coffee poured into her. She gathers them all up into her cupped hands until a liquid flame pools within them. Holding it to the newly formed stand she lets it temper and harden it into metal even the former robot would struggle to match in strength and resilience. Then she pours it into the basin on the bottom of the stand and continues to feed and stoke it, ready and waiting for the cauldron itself.

[Samantha McManus]

"Suppose this does work better in threes," she nods, casting her mind out over the throng of Wills and pulling a suitable one out.

Taking each by the hand, she leads them to surround the base Miriam had made.