xp_logs | Haroun and Nathan, Monday morning in the Danger Room

Haroun and Nathan finally get around to experimenting with the mid-air training they were talking about a few weeks ago. Haroun has some unusual ideas. Nathan is less than impressed by his creativity.

"I can hear you cackling over the exterior speakers, jackass," Nathan growled from the floor of the Danger Room. He levitated himself upwards so that he was roughly on eye-level with Haroun in the control booth. "This does not fill me with self-confidence. Or much liking for you."

"You don't have to like me." Haroun replied with great amusement. "Today we're going to the circus! And your role is - juggler. Here, catch!" he said, pressing a button to have a rod drop from the ceiling. A rod whose away end caught fire with a low whoomph. "Oh, and no using your hands. For anything. And stay in midair." he added.

Nathan caught the rod by the non-flaming end, dipping a little in the area as his concentration was briefly diverted. "The circus?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "You know, it would be infinitely easier to explain how you come up with some of these things if you drank."

Haroun laughed. "Sorry, not a vice I fall prey to. Oh, and here!" he said, flipping another toggle and dropping two more torches, which caught fire as the first had. "And mind your altitude." he said.

Nathan caught them, too. "So what's the purpose of this?"

"Concentration." he said, adding four more torches to the pile. But instead of dropping near Nate, they dropped in various random spots in the Danger Room. "From what Moira tells me you need to work on being able to split your focus multiple ways under stress without something giving way. May be a concentration flaw, might be that your ability to do that
dribbled out your ears. So we test."

"Concentration flaw?" Nathan asked indignantly, bobbing a bit in the air as he caught the next four torches. "I beg your fucking pardon. I multitask just fine, thank you very much!"

"Sure, says the man who just bobbled while holding maybe a kilo or two of weight in the air, plus himself." Haroun said pleasantly. "Now we make things interesting." he said, and tapped in the next few commands into the Room's control console.

And the Danger Room started shooting weights at him. Different sizes, like those he'd used for exercises back last year when he'd been working on breaking his fondness for fractal patterns. Nathan gritted his teeth and held onto the torches, catching the weights as they came at him from above, below and both sides. He started sinking in the air, though, and knew Haroun was noticing that.

"See, now I know that you've got the whole concentration thing licked, so you're _not_ sinking because you're getting distracted..." he said. "And the weights I'm throwing at you are purely negligable for a teek of your rated talent. So what's the deal, Nate?" he asked. "Where's the problem?"

"I told you the last time we talked about that," Nathan snapped back at him. "It's being in the air when I'm doing it. I wouldn't have any problems on the ground."

"Well then, this is why we train in here, to overcome such limitations." he said. "Now then - you've got all the weights, and the torches - be careful, one's sagging a little low there - it's time to make your life fun, now, isn't it." And he pressed a final toggle, and a very familiar small cylinder tumbled from the ceiling, attached to a short string. The string was tied to the pin, and when the string ran out the weight of the cylinder was enough to pull the pin. "Might want to get that..." he suggested.

Son of a... Pure stubbornness made him hold onto the weights and the torches as he wrapped the grenade in a TK bubble, but even though he had it properly shielded, the small explosion was enough to fracture what was beginning to look, to his altered sight, like a malformed tree of psionic energy. Bracing himself in the air was suddenly no longer feasible, and Nathan cursed as he landed hard on the mats, able to slow his fall but not stop it. The weights and torches fell around him, the torches going back out as soon as they hit the ground.

Haroun sounded the Scenario Over sound, and then killed the recording devices. "And that's it. A good run, despite my little trick at the end. Never did get to the fans, either." he mused, popping the bulletproof plastic and floating down to the ground. "You all right?"

Nathan glared up at him. "That was a grenade."

"Why yes, it was! Gold star for you." Haroun said cheerfully, holding out a hand to help Nathan up.

"Why was that a grenade?" Nathan hauled himself to his feet without taking the hand, wincing a little. "I was thirty feet in the air. If I hadn't slowed my fault I could have wound up in the fucking medlab, again, if I'd landed badly enough."

"I had safeties on full. If you had hit hard, you would have landed in impact goo. Nasty, but it keeps the docs happy." he said. "Same stuff I use on flying runs. Comes in any one of a number of toxic colors, and it tastes like camel ass."

"I don't fly for a reason, damn it," Nathan growled, straightening with another wince. "Why do you think I spent so much time using my TK to increase my mobility in every other way but flying?"

"I never said you had to stand still." he pointed out. "Just that you had to be up in the air. And why didn't you snuff the grenade's fuse telekinetically rather than trying to contain the blast?"

Nathan stopped, glaring. "Because I cannot focus on something that small-scale when I'm trying to levitate myself," he growled, willing Haroun to use something other than that so-reasonable tone. His pride hurt and he wanted an argument, damn it.

"Ever consider building a telekinetic platform under your feet and standing on that, rather than trying to hold yourself in midair?" he said, not giving into Nathan's desire to have a screaming match. "Or something along those lines?"

"It doesn't. Work. Like that." He loved it, he really did. Haroun couldn't see the lines of force, so why did he think he knew how they worked? "I can do that if I'm just levitating, but it breaks if I start distributing concentration in other directions. And any impact from those other directions would mean I hit the floor even faster."

"I still think you're overengineering the problem, but that's more Moira's thing than mine." he said. "Still, not a bad little run, all things considered. Got all the torches and all the weights, and only bobbled by maybe two meters or so."

"I had plenty of time to think about this problem," Nathan shot back at him. "I was in the base hospital for three months after I tried to catch that helicopter in mid-air, and trust me, I wasn't about to make that mistake again."

"You know how much you weigh, right? Can you apply that much force at yourself straight up? That should counteract gravity quite nicely. And I've seen some of your weight and stress drills, you can hoist, what, tons fairly easily?"

Nathan made himself take a deep breath before he answered. "You saw me lift the Blackbird last September. You stayed to fiddle after you and Scott replaced the engine, but Scott came down and saw that there was damage to the hangar floor. A dent, where I was standing. I have to brace in proportion to what I'm lifting. And when it's several things, it's harder to brace because the lines of force are scattered."

"So you're not completely violating Newton, just giving him a serious rash." he mused. "Should be able to spread it out, though. A wider base puts less pressure on any given point..." he said as his brain raced. "I think I need to talk to Moira. Go ahead and clean up, I'll catch up with you later..."

Nathan, trying not to grind his teeth, turned and headed for the showers. "No more grenades!" he tossed over his shoulder at Haroun.

"Wuss!" he shot back before heading out of the Danger Room entirely.