Completed Itsy, Bitsy Brainstorm

[Kuvarakh]

OOC - continued from Here.

24th of Winter, 420

'Two steps forward, three steps back...' Was the saying truer of any endeavor beside the developing of a djed-crafting discipline?

It had taken nearly an entire season for Kuvarakh and his mentor, Aldren Trask, to stumble upon the trigger for Kuvarakh's djed release. Strong emotion of any kind that built inner tension. It had been anger that had done it. Anger at a bunch of the University's thugs that had come to beat docility into a singer/musician. 'An artist! So art was now to be subject to the stifling parameters of ultra-conservatives? Freedom of Expression was granted as long as you accepted that you were only free to express the party line?'

His hands formed fists and his anger surged. His awareness of the room inflated to reach the walls, so many details unnoticed otherwise. It felt as if the whole of the room was entirely within his brain. But the pressure waned quickly as his anger slid into satisfaction. He knew that if he could find an outlet, a target, within the next few moments, he could connect his djed to their sphere of thought and apply his "amendment" to it.

"ALDREN, COME HERE! HURRY!" he shouted, feeling the pressure build sightly with the exertion of volume. Trask was quick to respond, having tasked the exercise himself. He plopped down on his knees a bit hurriedly and had to put his hands out to catch himself from falling against Kuvarakh. It had the benefit of allowing them to lock eyes, which they would have, had not Kuvarakh reared back to avoid impact.

The anger he cradled gave rise to annoyance at Trask for 'his clumsiness...did he really think he needed to drop right in my face? My awareness embraced the entire room!" In a flash he found himself recycling the frustration of the last few weeks.

'There must be another solution. Here I sit, again, flooded with anger, deliberately...Waiting to make another attempt to place a thought in Trask's mind. And when I fail, he will again berate my failure, to stoke it anew for another attempt, and another and another! What if it works? So what? All I am gaining is the ability to affect peoples minds while angry...or sad...or laughing! What good is a person who can only spread grief or anger...or foolishness wherever he goes? I will be a pariah.'

"Myri's Balls I'll be a pariah! Thanks a lot, you ungrateful little shyke! You think this is easy for me? To be on call for someone who's pissed off all the time? It's not MY fault you have to be all petching emotional to get anything done." Trask grabbed Kuvarakh's open collar, seeming undecided whether to push him away or draw him eye to eye.

Kuvarakh slapped away Trask's hand and propped himself up in the big man's face. "Well, actually, it IS your fault! YOU'RE the one doing the petching training! You're real quick to dump your criticism on me when I fail, but isn't it really YOUR failure? And by the way, Myri doesn't have balls, idiot! She's a godESS! You know FEmale?" his scorn was withering.

"Good Preachin' Gods! That's the POINT, moron! It's supposed to show how WRONG you are!" Trask roared. The two men stood like images in a mirror, eyes locked, glaring.

The pressure behind Kuvarakh's eyes exploded outward as they both shouted in perfect unison "I'VE HAD IT WITH THIS SHYKE!"

[Kuvarakh]

Trask stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Kuvarakh whipped around to show his disregard for the unjustified display and flopped into the chair with exaggerated impact, staring furiously at the door his mentor had departed through.

'Why is this happening? This isn't what I'm was trying to learn, "How to Piss People Off". They had tried grief, having him think about sad things, but that was too introverted, he couldn't focus out. Sometimes the sad event led to outrage. THEN I can do it!' he thought with bitter sarcasm.

They had tried laughter, a difficult feeling to generate on command. But they had opportunities from time to time. He found he couldn't get serious enough to focus. This, of course, led eventually to frustration. Naturally, once this occurred, he could do it. Up to this point, it was ultimately only anger that gave him control. He pounded his fist into his palm. He felt even more pressure build. Pressure he didn't want! Didn't dare use. Didn't WANT to use! It taunted him, teasing him with its availability.

He took a deep breath to calm himself, and began counting in his head. The pressure quickly dwindled, but his distress prevented it from dispersing entirely. The door opened and Trask stumbled in, his eyes wide. The odd smile on his face defied by his words, "I'm Pissed off!"

Kuvarakh scowled, "If you're expecting an apology, you can forget it."

"No, no, you don't understand. I shouldn't be pissed off, but I am!" He sounded overjoyed and furious at the same time. Kuvarakh cocked one eyebrow and eyed the older man cautiously. "I...don't understand."

"I Know! I didn't tell you. I was guarding against it. You should not have been able to affect me. But you did!" I was getting the idea that anger was the only thing working so I was deliberately aggravating you, trying to build your strength. But I was using my own skill to prevent your influence from affecting me! But it didn't work. It Didn't Work!"

Kuvarakh thought the whole world might be going mad as he watched the old man, giddy with happiness, nearly dancing in place, crowing over how his defense didn't work and he was pissed off. But the significance began to sink in. His mentor, much more powerful in hypnosis than he was, had specifically erected a mental defense against exactly the sort of hypnotic assault he anticipated from his student, but his student overpowered it anyway.

Hope surged in his heart, even more so as he felt a small bit of pressure remain in his head. He let it slip out towards Trask, trying to sense the anger he had placed there chimes earlier. He hoped to adjust it to give Trask the sense that he was only experiencing the anger as an example of what he should Stop feeling.

His extended consciousness hit the emotional wall of anger but could not penetrate it to affect it. Deflated, he sighed inwardly as Trask swung his gaze back to him. He no longer angry. "That was you just now, wasn't it? I mean, just now, this instant, right?"

Kuvarakh nodded, dejected in failure, but still holding a little hope as a result of having felt any pressure at all without anger to power it.

"That's great! I felt it. I'm sorry that I automatically blocked it, but I've kind of gotten used to blocking anything you send my way, since it's always been angry. But it wasn't this time, was it." It was a statement, not a question. "It was weak, but it was there."

Kuvarakh looked up at his mentor and grinned, "Yes...it was."

[Kuvarakh]

He tried to rebuild enthusiasm with the lingering hope, and at times he felt a slight bubble of pressure. It waned before he could expend it, but it was there. He tried to generate it, pumping his fists and gritting "Yes!" through his teeth.

Again a twitch of pressure, a sort of overlay of awareness to the room and its contents. Gone again. He tried again...And again. He sighed and decided to quit for the night. He was about to start getting frustrated again and now that there was even the hint of success from a different quarter, he didn't want to "backslide" to any easy route that he knew he'd never want to use.

He decided to meditate for awhile. 'That's one thing you can't get too much of' he thought to himself. He sat on the floor, his legs crossed, and let his eyes relax. He did not look around, but neither did he stare. He let the image of the room become nothing more than the pattern on a bubble, isolating him from existence. Images from his thoughts superseded the room.

Incidents of hypnotic successes played over a backdrop of Trask's sitting room. As though the room was a detailed painting on a canvas and images of the past seasons were splashed across it. The alchemy room at the University, the other room here in Trask's home, in front of the mirror, more recently at the tavern where Andrik had been playing, other times in between when his anger had empowered success, usually involving memories of his daughter.

There was a pattern, but it was not consistent. There were times he got angry and felt nothing. There were times, less often, that he felt something when he felt no anger at all. Of course, those were short lived due to his quick frustration building and taking over as the cause for the sensation. But something was the key. There was this sense of expanded consciousness that always accompanied his successes, when he felt as though he was mentally encompassing the room. It always followed that when he pulled back in, he could reflect the bubble out and connect his thought to another's.

The mirror sometimes made him feel this sensation. Maybe he-...Something distracted him, a tickle on his leg. he reached to scratch it and felt movement, several little ticklings on the fingers of the hand he was scratching with. There was a slight pinprick pain on his finger and his train of thought was lost. He scowled and looked down at his leg where his hand was.

A medium sized house spider was scuttling quickly to the side of his leg to make its getaway. Even though, as a Nuit, most spider bites wouldn't even bring a bump, he still loathed spiders. It wasn't 'fear'. It had never been actual fear, even before his transformation. It was revulsion. He found the little things so hideously ugly, that they repelled him with disgust. The thought of allowing a situation where one might actually touch him was beyond endurance. Sure, he would come back and squish it a moment later, even with his bare hand. But that first impulse of shock and revulsion could not be blocked.

He romped to his feet, gasping and recoiling, dizzy with the sudden movement and exertion. His head reeled, his focus double...tripled...overlayed the room and its contents threefold in his mind. He was not angry, he was not feeling a surge of hope, yet now he felt his rebounded awareness as powerfully as ever. This was an all new sensation invoking the bubble of pressure. He felt as though he could have hypnotized an entire city with something to focus on.

He made to call to Trask, but he had inhaled so hard at the sight of the spider that it was lost in the breathy exhale. Now he was about to shout for him, but he already felt the pressure deflate and his mental reach wane.

'Fear'...They had never tried that. But he could not truly feel fear from his mentor. He supposed that was why they'd never considered it. His expression soured as he gave it further thought. No, it was not truly fear he had felt anyway, He'd simply been startled. Why should being startled have generated such a burst of mental reach? Such a djed pressure bubble?

[Kuvarakh]

Nuit hearts don't function, so it was not a sudden heart rate acceleration, or the resulting blood pressure. 'What else occurs in a body's physiology from being startled? In what way is inner pressure built?' he started to analyze the functions he still shared with a living body. He kept coming to dead ends due to the Nuit lack of dependence on so many vital organs and systems.

He tried simply tensing his body, his face, his neck muscles. Maybe there was a slight effect. Pressure due to muscular tension, but was not comparable on any level. He considered the effect on his eyes. His irises had no doubt dilated with the reaction. Again, a probable slight effect, more the awareness of the room he experienced, rather than any sense of pressure. The only times he had felt pressure in his eyes was when he was releasing the djed after successfully amassing it.

He thought about that aspect. There was a pattern he had thought about recently, but he didn't see how it entered into this particular facet of development. He had always been close to someone else's face. Close enough to see their eyes. No, more than that. Close enough to see himself in their eyes.

No, that wasn't exactly accurate. When he had had an effect in front of the mirror, he wasn't that close. But he had seen himself. He had been aware of his own reflection. Aware of himself, as...separate. That had been the basis of Trask's first assignments.

He was about to call for Trask, inhaling deeply, when it occurred to him that his very first experience with hypnosis, the incident at the University lab with Andrik, had not had any event involving awareness of himself or any reflection. He held his breath as he ran the event through his mind, convinced there was something here that had thus far escaped him.

Of course! It fell on him like a ton of bricks. It was true, he had not been seeing his reflection, or being aware of his separate self. He didn't NEED to. His own djed had been part of Andrik right then. That had been the whole nature of the accident. He felt it because his djed was, what? 'Calling' to him? Pulling on his balance of his inner nature. He started to get excited, his body tensing, his jaw clenching, his breath compressing.

That must be it! They had restored the balance later, but he must have been changed somehow. Able to access a connection to others through their perception of him. He realized he was still holding his breath. As he started to let it go, he also realized he had started to build the familiar pressure in his head, his field of awareness expanded. When he blew his breath out, relaxing, the pressure slipped away.

His jaw dropped open in shock. He only breathed when he wanted to speak! As a Nuit, he didn't need to breathe. But when he wanted to speak, he still needed to push air through his vocal cords. His mind raced through past successes and failures. Yes...YES! That was it! Every time he had been successful, he had had cause to take a breath, whether instinctive like just now, when the spider had startled him, or other times when he was intending to say something during a test or experiment.

"TRAAAAAASK!!!"

[Arcane]

Rewards and Treasure! Experience Points +2 Hypnotism +2 Meditation Lores Kuvarakh's Personal Hypnotism Style Miscellaneous n/a Comments Why do I find the argument between Kuvarakh and Trask so funny I tried hard to think of a name to encapsulate the realization you made in the thread, but I kind of failed at that so that's what I came up with. I celebrated when Kuv hit his eureka moment though