Jamie and Scott, Friday afternoon
Jun. 9th, 2006 03:07 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsJamie and Scott have a conversation while they cool down from a successful hand-to-hand session. Jamie's coming along nicely, and Scott (being, after all, Scott) has some advice for him to help continue the trend.
"Not bad." Scott wasn't breathing too hard as he backed up, smiling across the mats at Jamie, but it had been a respectable workout. Jamie's improvement when it came to hand-to-hand was really quite impressive; he'd come a long way since the initial problems he'd had in self-defense classes. Of course, given the amount of practice time he's been logging... "One of these days you realize we're going to have to do this with dupes. That should be fun. We'll have to recruit a few more sparring partners, of course..."
"I've been trying really hard to put the legend of Six-Punch Jamie, the Heartland's Least Conscious Son, behind me," Jamie replied with a proud smile. "Though I'm kinda hoping one day I'll run into the guy who decided I wouldn't start getting into fights until after I stopped taking self-defense regularly, just so I can let him know I appreciate the irony." He shook his head. "I spar against dupes sometimes, when nobody else is available, but it's not much of a workout even if I cut the dupe loose--I know myself too well."
"Not precisely what I had in mind," Scott said with a slight smile that a number of his leather-wearing comrades would have called 'scary' without hesitation. "But I'll get back to you with details once I give it some more thought." He rubbed at the back of his neck as he stepped off the mats entirely, heading for where he'd left his water bottle on the bench. "I have all these things in mind for this summer that we need to get accomplished, team-wise," he said, half-to himself. He supposed they'd have to wait until July and August, though.
"Oh yeah?" Jamie asked curiously, mopping the back of his neck with a towel. "Like what?"
"Switching up training partners. Shifting the whole training rotation, actually - I've been reviewing our missions for the last year as a whole, trying to identify patterns and any correlating lack in our training routines. There weren't as many cases of that as I suspected there might be, but there are about a half-dozen items we need to tackle." Scott took a sip from his water bottle, then smiled again, more wryly. "Amazing what you can discover when you actually take a step back from the nitty-gritty details to look at the big picture."
"This is what I hear," Jamie replied, his voice muffled as he toweled his hair. "I think I've got the opposite problem, though--you run around in six bodies at once long enough, the big picture's no problem but the details start to blur together."
Scott rotated his shoulder, wincing as it cracked. "I don't spend enough time on hand-to-hand these days," he said. "I ought to. I'm still getting used to the loss of vision."
Jamie gave him a dubious look. "If that's what you call being at a disadvantage, I think my ribs are really glad we didn't do this when you were at your peak. I mean to say, damn."
Scott laughed. "Us skinny guys can hit surprisingly hard. Although I ought to schedule you for a few sessions with Nathan - he's slower, especially since he broke his back last year, but he hits like a truck. Even when he's not adding a little TK just to get the point across." He sat down on the bench, grinning crookedly up at Jamie. "Different styles, you know. I imagine you're seeing that, with the range of sparring partners you have in training."
Jamie nodded. "Starting to, anyway. I didn't see it right away, but now that I'm learning what to look for it's hard to miss. It's like, there's barely two people on the team who learned the same way, or even in the same place. Even the other trainees, we don't really fight the same." He gave Scott a shrewd look. "But that's because you're not teaching us the same, isn't it? I mean, I'm learning different things than, say, Terry will, because I've got about a foot of height and a pretty significant amount of weight on her."
Scott nodded, leaning back against the wall behind him. "Good call on that. And then, of course, you throw powers into the mix and everything becomes unpredictable. Terry doesn't need to be a foot taller if she can open her mouth and knock out a crowd with a scream."
"Heh. That's for sure." Jamie tilted his head thoughtfully. "I bet that makes it a little trickier to figure out what to teach us. I mean, you'd want people like Terry, or Lorna, or Shiro to know hand-to-hand in case they can't use their powers for whatever reason, but at the same time, most of the time they won't need it."
"Sometimes, they don't want to use it, too," Scott pointed out. "If you were Shiro and you needed to take down an opponent, what's going to do less damage to him in most cases? Plasma blasts, or fists?"
"Huh. Yeah, I can see that." Jamie grinned. "So the short answer is, yes, it does make it trickier?"
"Yes, but why give the short answer when I can give a lecture?" Scott asked wryly. "You know me." He studied Jamie for a moment, thoughtfully. "Perceptions of our powers, our own beliefs about our strengths and weaknesses - they do a lot to shape what you wind up doing on the team. Occasionally people worry when they think they don't have enough 'power'. Makes them question their usefulness, when they look at some of their teammates, and that's damaging."
"Huh." Jamie thought about that one for a while. "Guess the grass really is always greener, for some people, horrible cliche or not. I mean, there's people who don't like their powers because all they think they're good for is weapons." He shrugged. "Maybe I'm lucky having a power that's just weird, I never really thought about it stacking up against anybody else's."
"I went through that phase," Scott admitted, rubbing at the scars on the side of his face. "'What the hell good am I? I blow things up! Sometimes unintentionally!'" he said, repeating the words that echoed out of his memory. "I got furious at Charles, once, not long after he made me field leader. Told him he had no business putting someone useless for anything but destruction and broken at that, to boot, in charge."
Jamie looked at him, trying to keep the staggering disbelief off his face. "Everybody says you're the best field leader they've ever seen." He checked himself. "Which is, let me guess, the point. How long did it take you to decide maybe the Professor wasn't completely nuts after all?"
"I still have my moments." Scott softened the wry tone with another slight smile. "I don't believe in being too sure of myself, in the quieter moments. Maybe that's part of the problem I've been having - I take that to extremes. But if you're not learning, not constantly questioning your capabilities, pushing the envelope, learning more..." He paused, looking embarassed. "And there I go lecturing again."
"I"m reading my way through the library when I can't find anything else to do with a spare dupe," Jamie volunteered. "My grandpa used to say, if you're not learning, you're dead. I think the two of you would've got along."
Scott's smile returned, warmer this time. "I'll take that as a compliment," he said quietly. "Definitely, a compliment..." He rubbed at the knuckles of one hand, tilting his head slightly to the right. "I've been thinking a lot lately about what we do. Remembering why I decided all those years ago that I needed to devote my life to it. Reminding myself, I think..."
"S' probably a good idea, every once in a while," Jamie opined. "You don't want to just . . . do stuff because it's what you do. Not if it's important." He smiled. "That's one of the reasons I like doing those big dramatic gestures for Kitty every once in a while. Helps keep everything in perspective."
"Perspective's in short supply around here sometimes. I think it's because we live in the middle of it all - the school, the team. The normalcy can be as jarring as the crisis, sometimes..." Now he wasn't making much sense at all. Or maybe he was.
"I'm starting to get that, I think." Jamie snorted, shaking his head. "Here I am, training as hard as I can against the eventuality that somebody like Magneto's going to pop up and need to be stopped, and then I take a shower and go upstairs and pretty soon it's time to get dinner started, or there's the list of light bulbs need changing, or I get an e-mail from one of my profs about the book list for next semester. It's a little jarring sometimes."
"If you want cognitive dissonance, try going from a Danger Room session to marking exams," Scott said dryly. "I occasionally have to smack myself to remember to switch from Cyclops to Headmaster Summers." And there he went again with the disassociation. Surely everyone was right and that wasn't healthy.
"Oh, thanks very much, Mr. Summers," Jamie replied equally dryly. "Now I have this horrible mental image of going out on an important mission at the same time as I'm writing a term paper. Watch me set new records for cognitive dissonance now."
"Not bad." Scott wasn't breathing too hard as he backed up, smiling across the mats at Jamie, but it had been a respectable workout. Jamie's improvement when it came to hand-to-hand was really quite impressive; he'd come a long way since the initial problems he'd had in self-defense classes. Of course, given the amount of practice time he's been logging... "One of these days you realize we're going to have to do this with dupes. That should be fun. We'll have to recruit a few more sparring partners, of course..."
"I've been trying really hard to put the legend of Six-Punch Jamie, the Heartland's Least Conscious Son, behind me," Jamie replied with a proud smile. "Though I'm kinda hoping one day I'll run into the guy who decided I wouldn't start getting into fights until after I stopped taking self-defense regularly, just so I can let him know I appreciate the irony." He shook his head. "I spar against dupes sometimes, when nobody else is available, but it's not much of a workout even if I cut the dupe loose--I know myself too well."
"Not precisely what I had in mind," Scott said with a slight smile that a number of his leather-wearing comrades would have called 'scary' without hesitation. "But I'll get back to you with details once I give it some more thought." He rubbed at the back of his neck as he stepped off the mats entirely, heading for where he'd left his water bottle on the bench. "I have all these things in mind for this summer that we need to get accomplished, team-wise," he said, half-to himself. He supposed they'd have to wait until July and August, though.
"Oh yeah?" Jamie asked curiously, mopping the back of his neck with a towel. "Like what?"
"Switching up training partners. Shifting the whole training rotation, actually - I've been reviewing our missions for the last year as a whole, trying to identify patterns and any correlating lack in our training routines. There weren't as many cases of that as I suspected there might be, but there are about a half-dozen items we need to tackle." Scott took a sip from his water bottle, then smiled again, more wryly. "Amazing what you can discover when you actually take a step back from the nitty-gritty details to look at the big picture."
"This is what I hear," Jamie replied, his voice muffled as he toweled his hair. "I think I've got the opposite problem, though--you run around in six bodies at once long enough, the big picture's no problem but the details start to blur together."
Scott rotated his shoulder, wincing as it cracked. "I don't spend enough time on hand-to-hand these days," he said. "I ought to. I'm still getting used to the loss of vision."
Jamie gave him a dubious look. "If that's what you call being at a disadvantage, I think my ribs are really glad we didn't do this when you were at your peak. I mean to say, damn."
Scott laughed. "Us skinny guys can hit surprisingly hard. Although I ought to schedule you for a few sessions with Nathan - he's slower, especially since he broke his back last year, but he hits like a truck. Even when he's not adding a little TK just to get the point across." He sat down on the bench, grinning crookedly up at Jamie. "Different styles, you know. I imagine you're seeing that, with the range of sparring partners you have in training."
Jamie nodded. "Starting to, anyway. I didn't see it right away, but now that I'm learning what to look for it's hard to miss. It's like, there's barely two people on the team who learned the same way, or even in the same place. Even the other trainees, we don't really fight the same." He gave Scott a shrewd look. "But that's because you're not teaching us the same, isn't it? I mean, I'm learning different things than, say, Terry will, because I've got about a foot of height and a pretty significant amount of weight on her."
Scott nodded, leaning back against the wall behind him. "Good call on that. And then, of course, you throw powers into the mix and everything becomes unpredictable. Terry doesn't need to be a foot taller if she can open her mouth and knock out a crowd with a scream."
"Heh. That's for sure." Jamie tilted his head thoughtfully. "I bet that makes it a little trickier to figure out what to teach us. I mean, you'd want people like Terry, or Lorna, or Shiro to know hand-to-hand in case they can't use their powers for whatever reason, but at the same time, most of the time they won't need it."
"Sometimes, they don't want to use it, too," Scott pointed out. "If you were Shiro and you needed to take down an opponent, what's going to do less damage to him in most cases? Plasma blasts, or fists?"
"Huh. Yeah, I can see that." Jamie grinned. "So the short answer is, yes, it does make it trickier?"
"Yes, but why give the short answer when I can give a lecture?" Scott asked wryly. "You know me." He studied Jamie for a moment, thoughtfully. "Perceptions of our powers, our own beliefs about our strengths and weaknesses - they do a lot to shape what you wind up doing on the team. Occasionally people worry when they think they don't have enough 'power'. Makes them question their usefulness, when they look at some of their teammates, and that's damaging."
"Huh." Jamie thought about that one for a while. "Guess the grass really is always greener, for some people, horrible cliche or not. I mean, there's people who don't like their powers because all they think they're good for is weapons." He shrugged. "Maybe I'm lucky having a power that's just weird, I never really thought about it stacking up against anybody else's."
"I went through that phase," Scott admitted, rubbing at the scars on the side of his face. "'What the hell good am I? I blow things up! Sometimes unintentionally!'" he said, repeating the words that echoed out of his memory. "I got furious at Charles, once, not long after he made me field leader. Told him he had no business putting someone useless for anything but destruction and broken at that, to boot, in charge."
Jamie looked at him, trying to keep the staggering disbelief off his face. "Everybody says you're the best field leader they've ever seen." He checked himself. "Which is, let me guess, the point. How long did it take you to decide maybe the Professor wasn't completely nuts after all?"
"I still have my moments." Scott softened the wry tone with another slight smile. "I don't believe in being too sure of myself, in the quieter moments. Maybe that's part of the problem I've been having - I take that to extremes. But if you're not learning, not constantly questioning your capabilities, pushing the envelope, learning more..." He paused, looking embarassed. "And there I go lecturing again."
"I"m reading my way through the library when I can't find anything else to do with a spare dupe," Jamie volunteered. "My grandpa used to say, if you're not learning, you're dead. I think the two of you would've got along."
Scott's smile returned, warmer this time. "I'll take that as a compliment," he said quietly. "Definitely, a compliment..." He rubbed at the knuckles of one hand, tilting his head slightly to the right. "I've been thinking a lot lately about what we do. Remembering why I decided all those years ago that I needed to devote my life to it. Reminding myself, I think..."
"S' probably a good idea, every once in a while," Jamie opined. "You don't want to just . . . do stuff because it's what you do. Not if it's important." He smiled. "That's one of the reasons I like doing those big dramatic gestures for Kitty every once in a while. Helps keep everything in perspective."
"Perspective's in short supply around here sometimes. I think it's because we live in the middle of it all - the school, the team. The normalcy can be as jarring as the crisis, sometimes..." Now he wasn't making much sense at all. Or maybe he was.
"I'm starting to get that, I think." Jamie snorted, shaking his head. "Here I am, training as hard as I can against the eventuality that somebody like Magneto's going to pop up and need to be stopped, and then I take a shower and go upstairs and pretty soon it's time to get dinner started, or there's the list of light bulbs need changing, or I get an e-mail from one of my profs about the book list for next semester. It's a little jarring sometimes."
"If you want cognitive dissonance, try going from a Danger Room session to marking exams," Scott said dryly. "I occasionally have to smack myself to remember to switch from Cyclops to Headmaster Summers." And there he went again with the disassociation. Surely everyone was right and that wasn't healthy.
"Oh, thanks very much, Mr. Summers," Jamie replied equally dryly. "Now I have this horrible mental image of going out on an important mission at the same time as I'm writing a term paper. Watch me set new records for cognitive dissonance now."
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Date: 2006-06-12 12:42 am (UTC)Because he could. *giggles* Possibly not a great idea, but still.
...Scott and Paige are an eensy bit jealous of Jamie's power sometimes, aren't they? ;)
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Date: 2006-06-12 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 12:57 pm (UTC)