Backdated to Sunday, April 9th

[x-traitor.livejournal.com]

Tommy is studying. Lorna startles him. Tommy alloys his new gloves and Lorna has to talk him through getting himself out of them. Yey Unintentional Powers Training!


Saturdays were made for resting. Relaxing. Not working or thinking or really doing anything stressful. Lorna found that a nice theory but gave it no more thought than that. Instead she'd risen with the sun to finish up some last minute details and start doing some food prep. By late morning, she felt deeply accomplished and flopped down on a sofa in the rec room, idly watching some of the younger kids play video games and taking a well deserved rest.

Tommy was sitting at a table behind the sofa currently occupied, reading one of his chemistry books. The events with Forge earlier the week had freaked him out a little. In front of him, lined up waiting for transfiguration, were five soda cans from the recycle bin sitting nearby. He was so consumed in his book that he barely noticed his tummy rumbling with hunger. He had avoided breakfast, as Tommy found eating in his new gloves rather odd, so he hadn't eaten anything all day. But the page on silver had his full attention.

A particularly loud gurgle from Tommy's protesting stomach had Lorna sitting up and peering over the back of the sofa at him. "Your stomach sounds like it's trying to eat your spine," Lorna observed dryly, "Take a break and find a sandwich, already."

It took him a moment to realize she was talking to him and his head jerked up in her direction. For a moment, Tommy saw green, thought copper, mixed with his thoughts on silver...and then he cried out in slight pain as the glove which had formerly been black were now a stiff alloy of copper and silver. "Shit..." He cursed softly, glaring at first his hand, then the woman who had caused his thoughts to wander.

The sudden shift in the EM fields made Lorna jump and her eyes were drawn immediately to his hands. Her eyebrows jumped toward her hairline. "Oh. Wow. That's kinda cool." She stood and circled around the couch to stand by him, reaching out to poke the metal. "Huh."

He grunted softly as he tried to move his fingers but they were held fast by the metal encasing them. "Glad you're amused..." Tommy managed to bite out. His thoughts were racing. He couldn't transfigure them back to their original material as he didn't know exactly what it was. He could try to transfigure it to an element but all he knew well enough were solids. Compounds required him not thinking and Tommy really didn't want to make the situation worse. "Fuck..." He muttered as he again tried to move his fingers out of frustration.

Lorna shook her head, "Okay, calm down. What do you need to do to change them back?" Her voice shifted automatically to teacher-mode when she realized that he was actually upset. Perfectly confident, like this wasn't anything to worry about. "Are you hurting?"

Looking up, Tommy glared at her. "I need to think..." He practically growled, more frustrated with himself then her. "And no...I just can't exactly move."

She ignored the glare. "So you're not in any pain, that's good. How do you normally change things?"

He took a deep breath so as not to snap at her. "Elements, I have to concentrate. Compounds seem to come when I'm not thinking or distracted...like just now..." Well so it was little snappish but he couldn't concentrate properly if she was talking to him.

Lorna nodded and kept her mouth shut, taking another chair at the table while she watched him work. She didn't really mind his hostility. Hardly even noticed it really. The only thing that mattered at the moment was getting him through this exercise.

Tommy took a deep breath and calmed down. He'd never transfigured compounds back to something else and wasn't quite sure how to go about it. Sighing he motioned with one stiff hand to the book. "Could you turn to the page on copper?"

She reached out, paging through the book for him. "Is copper an easy change for you?"

"Anything but lead isn't an easy change...I've never done copper or silver before. I have NO idea where to start on an alloy of the two..." He spat out, still frustrated. "Not to mention, I have no idea what I could change it to that would let me get my hands out. I can only do solids so far, liquids and gases are still beyond me." He kept talking because he could think while he talked but not when she did.

"So change them to lead." That seemed an easy enough solution. Lead would probably be easier for him to shift to something else. And if it wasn't, well, it was a wonderfully ferrous which would make it simple for her to draw it off him.

"I've never gone from a compound to an element before so let me concentrate." Tommy read through the page on copper and got a pretty good picture of it in his head. Biting his lower lip, he closed his eyes and tried thinking of each element in turn; lead, copper then silver. Then he tried mixing the information or just lead for a good five minutes on his own. After sitting there for half an hour with no change, Tommy knew there wasn't going to be any. The copper pizza box had taken him two days of on and off work, but he'd gotten change the size of a dime in twenty minutes. He sigh in defeat...and the minute he stopped thinking about it, he felt the change. When he opened his eyes, to his shock, his hands were encased in lead, instead of the silver/copper alloy.

Randomly appearing EM fields were always interesting. Like a sudden stiff wind or an earthquake. Just enough to startle her if she wasn't expecting it. "Well that's better. How are you feeling?" Newly developing mutations often were very draining.

Draining was an understatment. Now he knew exactly why he did the pizza box a little at a time. "I...don't feel so good..."

He was sheet white. Well, fabulous. "Okay that's enough for today then." She extended her hand and pulled the lead to her, sliding off his skin with a dull liquid sheen and balling in her palm. She tucked it away in her pocket and stood up, taking him around the shoulders. "Come on, let's get you down to Amelia and Moira for a quick look over then we'll get you something to eat."

Normally, he would have reacted to her using her mutation. But right now Tommy could have cared less. He let her lead him, sticking his hands safely in his pockets, leaving the book. He could get it later.