"Why are you drawing it like that?" Ed took his pen back and cleared out the symbols in the air, laughing at the look on Zavier's face. The two had found each other in the first days of the gatherings and had hit it off instantly. Zavier had rarely found someone who was as enthusiastically and shamelessly nerdy as he was, but Ed made even him look pedestrian. Zavier had learned that he'd been an illustrator and artist before The System and they'd spent a lot of evenings rehashing comic book lore, fandom alternate universe theories, and just sharing their love of all things fantasy, science fiction, comics, and movies.
With that friendship had come trust, and one evening Ed had confided in Zavier why he was there.
"I need to tell you something, but first I need to do a little magic. Do you trust me?"
Zavier looked at Ed dubiously. "What kind of magic? And what do you need to tell me? Have you been faking your Trekkieness this whole time? Just memorized a bunch of facts to look cool on trivia night?"
Ed laughed and shook his head. "No, nothing that important." His laughter quickly died out. "But seriously, this IS important. It could actually be life and death."
Zavier grew serious then, jokes left unsaid. "Really?"
Ed nodded. "Really. Maybe not for you, but possibly. Definitely for everyone out there." He waved in the general direction of the cul-de-sac where Gabriel was hosting his nightly gathering. Just thinking about it made Ed's bile rise and he wanted to storm out there and smash Gabriel's face in… No, none of that. If the crowd didn't rip me apart Cass definitely would. "Definitely for Cass. He's in danger, Zavier."
Zavier's eyes went wide and he felt his skin prickle. Gabriel seemed like a good influence. Zavier had been happy to see Cass blossoming in his care. Gabriel was giving him something Zavier couldn't and it was having a profound effect on the boy. Zavier didn't know what it was and so he'd been content to let Gabriel mentor Cass. He'd never been a jealous man and had never felt the urge to compare himself to other men, so knowing that Gabriel could give Cass something he couldn't just felt like a blessing.
A deep part of him worried, though. Cass was becoming more confident, true, but he was also becoming more distant. He was more on edge around him and Tess - quick to anger and always ready with an argument at even the most innocuous questions or comments. The last time Zavier had asked how his leveling was going Cass had erupted in instantaneous rage and lashed out at him.
"I'm leveling, DAD," his tone carried the angst of a teenage boy who had been challenged. "And I'm doing it without lectures or lessons and without getting pushed into situations I don't want to be in. I'm leveling MY way, and it's working."
"Oh, okay son," Zavier didn't know how to respond to this. "I'm happy for you then. Do you need anything?"
That had been the wrong question to ask, evidently, because Cass went red in the face. "Not. From. You."
He was gone a moment later, the front door slamming behind him and leaving only confusion in his wake. Zavier had only seen him in the crowds after that, Cass always disappearing as soon as Zavier or Tess tried to catch up with him. In the end they had given up, trusting in Father Gabriel and knowing that Cass wasn't in any more danger in the neighborhood than anyone else. At least Luna is nice and safe with the Bouchards, he'd thought at the time.
He brushed the memories aside and focused on Ed again. "If they're in danger then I'll do whatever you need."
Ed nodded then pulled his palette out of the air, setting it to levitate directly in front of him. Zavier gaped at it and Ed explained.
"This is the Palette of Possibilities, and this is the Brush of Reality." Zavier had seen him use the brush before but had never tried to identify it. He didn't know why, but he felt like it would be rude. "When The System arrived my class became largely focused around my skills as an artist. Add in some interesting challenges, some creative ways to defeat monsters and help others, sprinkle in a heavy dose of tragedy," his eyes went dark at that but he continued. "All of that combined with an artist who doesn't know what sleep is and you get some pretty powerful skills and items. It would take too much explaining to go through it all, so it'll suffice it to say that I can bend reality as The System perceives it."
Shock and hope bloomed in Zavier. Shape reality as The System perceives it? Holy shit, this guy might be the answer to my problems! "What does that even mean? Pretend I'm an idiot and explain it like I'm five."
Ed chuckled. "That'll be easy to do, I don't have to pretend." They both laughed and Ed continued.
"The System isn't magic, it's just rules. Think of it like a coloring book that we each color in with our own choice of crayons. Only, it's more than that."
"It's a programming language, like The Matrix."
Ed's eyes lit up. "Yes! That's more like it. It's a programming language from an incredibly advanced society. Which means that where most people get a coloring book, some of us just get a blank canvas that we can put any idea onto."
"I understand that," and Zavier shared his experience with The Architect, his class, and his struggles with gaining more skills.
Ed nodded through the explanation in understanding. "That makes sense. We actually have similar abilities, just expressed in different ways. I can use The System to create things that I can imagine - not just items or images but also skills and abilities. I can't create anything I can't fathom, or create a skill that's outside of my knowledge and understanding, but anything that I'm intimately familiar with - or that is fully solidified in my mind - is doable. And before you ask, I can't create art golems or anything like that. I'm not a fighter and the materials I work with are ephemeral. I can express concepts and form them to my own designs, but The System doesn't give me blueprints to work off of. I have to learn them from watching other people use their skills, or practice with my own ideas so many times that I could do it in my sleep. Back when I used to draw caricatures for magazines I would study a face from dozens of pictures, practice all the different lines and angles, and learn their face so well that I knew every muscle in their face more intimately than I knew my own. I could tell you how their chin would dimple when they smiled, or if one eyelid opened slightly more than another for each expression they held. It's like that with my skills. I can create, but only when I know it so intimately that I may as well have learned it from The System. I can't mimic something that I see once or twice, I have to know everything about it or figure out how to create it myself."
Zavier had been silent, his body tense with rapt attention. This was the coolest thing he'd ever heard in his life. "Okay, so I have the ELI5 description - sorry, that's a Reddit term. I understand it like I am five, but what else is there?"
Ed mulled that over before responding. "That's actually pretty much it. The details are harder to pin down, but the concepts are all you really need to know. The important thing is that I can see through skills a lot more easily than your average person. I know when one is being used, I get a really good blueprint on what it's trying to do, and if I see it enough I can get a good understanding of how to counter or copy it. Which brings me to the heart of the matter."
He took a deep breath before continuing. "Father Gabriel is manipulating all of you. He's evil and he's going to kill you all."
Zavier's gasp echoed in the empty garage that had become their impromptu man cave. "Wait, wait, wait. What are you even talking about? He's been nothing but good to us! He's bringing the community together. He's HELPING Cass!"
"I know it seems like that, but that's his skill. Well, skills. He's using a few in tandem, and they grow in power and influence the more he uses them on someone."
Zavier stood up and started pacing the garage, studiously avoiding looking at Ed. Is he jealous of the attention Gabriel is getting? Is he trying to undermine what he's building here? Zavier paced and Ed stayed silent, just tracking him with his eyes. Zavier knew - KNEW that Gabriel was good. He'd never been so sure of anything in his life.
But, why was he so sure? Zavier wasn't the type of person to come to conclusions so deeply and fully. He had a lot of confidence in his knowledge and believed in truths strongly, but there was always a question. ALWAYS. Even in his own introspections he understood that he could be very confident in his ideas and opinions, but never 100% sure of anything. Outside of mathematics there were no absolutes, as far as he knew, and this should be no exception. And yet he felt that Father Gabriel was Good, with a capital G, all the way to his deepest being.
He stopped pacing then, his eyes unfocused and staring into nothing. But do I know that? Deep in my core, is there any doubt whatsoever? He pondered that and realized that there was. Some part of him, a part buried deep, was screaming out that something was wrong. That there were questions being left unanswered and unexamined.
A small bloom of doubt crept up from that dark place and began shining light on dusty, dirty corners of his psyche that had been ignored for weeks. He came back to himself and walked back to Ed, pulling his chair closer to the man.
"Okay, say that I believe you and what you're saying is true. How would it even work? What is he doing? If he really is lying to us, how would we even know?"