Ororo and Nate | Saturday afternoon
Oct. 28th, 2006 02:05 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsOut by the lake, Ororo and Nate have a little flying lesson. It's all fun and games until someone ends up in the drink.
It was a fine, cool day outside, the kind that you couldn't help but be thankful for. Though the temperature was steadily dropping as the month went on, the sky that afternoon was thankfully free of clouds. The sun shown brightly down on the grounds of Xavier's Institute, touching the lake and setting off each tiny ripple. Ororo made her way out to the lake, clad in close-fitting, comfortable clothes and carrying a small stopwatch in one hand. She could feel the faint dance of the breeze over her skin and smiled, happy to be out-of-doors with an enjoyable task ahead of her.
Nathan was already waiting for her, looking more than a little sheepish. "Is this really necessary?" he asked, and Ororo was treated to the infamous puppy dog eyes before she could say hello. "I mean, it's not like I've crashed in the exoskeleton on a mission recently or anything..."
“Perhaps not, but I have been told that there are some patches of ground around here that would question your landing technique,” the white-haired woman replied. To her credit, she kept a straight face as she said this, though she had been torn between laughter and stomach-sinking dread when she had heard from Cain about Nathan’s outburst the week before. "And do not think that look will work on me. I have trained long and hard against such nefarious ploys."
"I came over the ridge at the wrong angle, that's all," Nathan protested meekly. "And then the lake wasn't where it should be." Inwardly he was trying to repress laughter himself. He had no real issues with the issue of flying lessons, especially given that Ororo probably had quite a bit she could teach him. But if they're going to start calling me Don Quixote, I might as well live up to the role... Occasionally he thought he was a little perverse-minded.
“Yes, it has quite a nasty habit of moving around when you’re not looking,” Ororo said, smiling now as she shook her head. “So, please correct me if I am mistaken, but it seems perhaps some issues that may be making your flying more difficult are both a lack of fine control, and the interference of emotions to your concentration?”A problem that seems to plague more people than not, she thought dryly to herself.
"I think it's almost more the latter than the former. Although my fine control is shakier than it used to be, and has been since my powers came back," Nathan conceded with a sigh, the smile fading. "Hard to believe I used to do molecular-level TK on a daily basis. But yeah," he admitted, rubbing at the back of his neck, "I do not do well flying when I'm upset. I suspect... well, my TK's instinctive sometimes. It almost feels like there's something interfering with my awareness of my surroundings when I'm flying and angry. Like the incident with the lake. I should have been able to feel that the water was that close."
Nodding, Ororo gave him a sympathetic look. “It can be difficult to realize that once you are in that state, however. Of course the best thing would be to simply calm down, or not to become upset in the first place, but we are only human, after all.”
He gave her a slightly wry look. "And I'm a human being who lost all of his natural mechanisms for controlling his emotions when he was fourteen years old, and lost the artificial mechanisms two years ago. I'd say I'm doing pretty well to be having only the occasional temper tantrum." He smiled, though, a quick self-deprecating smile that took
any edge off his words.
“I understand the inevitability of the occasional lapse,” Ororo replied genuinely. “All too well. And I do not think you need anger management lessons or exercises, though I do have an impressive collection of them now, should you ever be curious. I thought instead we might work on your awareness to your environment while flying under normal circumstances, since I do not have any desire to upset you at this point in time.”
"That would probably be helpful," Nathan said simply. "I think the other problem is that my eyesight shifts when I'm wearing the exoskeleton - I don't see normally."
“Hm.” While Ororo understood this problem, it was slightly more difficult to address. She herself saw differently while she was using her powers, but she couldn’t exactly counsel Nathan to use the exact same technique while flying. “How do you see? What is easiest for you to detect? What do you seem to miss more often?”
"I see the lines of force," Nathan said. "Anything that's actually moving is easier to see than anything that's not... sometimes that gets in the way, though," he said thoughtfully. "Moving objects are brighter. Too bright sometimes. It's like I get blinded briefly by the glare."
“Interesting.” Hanging the stopwatch around her neck and tucking it beneath her collar, Ororo gestured vaguely to the lake and beyond. “Though we could have done this in the Danger Room, I suppose, there is much more room out here to maneuver. I have taken the liberty of putting a few obstacles in place for you… if nothing else, practice will eventually make perfect.”
"... now you're worrying me," Nathan said, but smiled again as light coalesced around him and the exoskeleton took shape. "So what's the objective here?"
“I would merely like you to fly to the quarry and back, at whatever pace you choose. This is really more about observation than achieving a particular goal at the moment. That will come later.” She gave him a not-so-reassuring smirk before lifting off from the ground herself. Apparently she intended to watch from the best vantage point possible.
Nathan looked at her warily as he rose off the ground as well. "All right then... " he said, turning in the direction of the quarry. He got a little more altitude and started to glide. Not attempting to break any speed records; if Ororo had obstacles, he wanted to see them
before he smashed into them.
The first one was easy enough – a medium-sized rock slowly rose off the ground beneath him in a shaky but straight enough path, reaching his altitude about fifty yards ahead of him. It hovered there for a moment, then headed for him quickly, propelled by the strong winds that Ororo was manipulating.
Nathan dodged easily, grabbing it with the exoskeleton's talons and flinging it into the lake. Maybe he could pick up the pace just a little... be more of a moving target. The wings of the exoskeleton beat once, twice, and he picked up speed, barely conscious of the manipulation of forces the maneuver took.
As he did this, several more rocks came up to meet him, working seemingly in tandem now. Ororo experimented with different methods of approach – slow and loopy, quick and sharp – to see which would be spotted the quickest.
Nathan saw the fastest of them first and moved to dodge. This wasn't much different from the Danger Room, really... and no sooner had he thought it, than one of the slower-moving rocks clipped a wing he didn't bring around quite in time. #Crap!# It knocked him off-balance in the air and he had to do a rather ungraceful half-move to avoid hitting the surface of the lake.
Ororo raised an eyebrow over one white-clouded eye, watching the maneuver and setting a few of the rocks back to the ground safely. The rest she drew into a vortex, aiming it at Nate and wondering with a detached curiosity what would happen should he be caught in the middle of it. It seemed almost like it would be a good ambush technique, and she resolved to bring it up to him later, when they were both on the ground.
Oh, there was a pattern to this now, he could see it... Nathan folded the wings of the exoskeleton and dove down through the center of the vortex, coming out at the bottom with just enough room to turn the dive into a climb before he hit the water. Hah! I can so fly, take that, all of you...
The last obstacle, however, wasn't so easy to see. Maybe it was cheating, but sometimes one had to deal with threats one couldn't see. Ororo raised a wall of air and wind, roughly twenty-five yards across and the same height; it would be easy enough to shift it in accordance to his movements.
Nathan caught a strange glittering in the air in front of him. A bit perplexed, he tried to get above it, but it moved with him, and as he hit it he realized what it was. You sneaky... Any further observations on Ororo's deviousness were abruptly cut off by the sheer force of the window, and his sudden struggle to stay in the air. Nathan's jaw clenched, inside the exoskeleton, and the firebird flared sun-bright for a moment, the structure of the exoskeleton reinforcing itself. He shot upwards with a sudden burst of speed.
He's certainly got the speed... Ororo wasn't able to block Nate's ascent quickly enough, and he cleared the barrier with plenty of room to spare. The quarry wasn't far now, and she allowed him to reach it and navigate a turn back before raising another obstacle.
This time she picked up several rocks from the quarry, using one as a decoy in front of him while the others began to assail him from the sides and back. It was good to know how well he sensed things from other directions; even without sight one needed to be aware of the surrounding threats.
He felt them coming and dodged - deftly at first, more clumsily as more of them came in. It wasn't like standing on the ground and blocking multiple objects. So much of his TK was all tied up in the exoskeleton... one of the rocks hit one wing, and this time Nathan did hit the water, with an immense splash.
It wasn't funny, really, not at all, and Ororo had no reason to be laughing. Still, she was, just a little, as Nathan surfaced. Who knew that throwing rocks could be so fun? "Do you need help?" she called across the water, trying to keep her amusement from showing in her voice.
The exoskeleton had not cut out with the impact - what good would it have been if it did that sort of thing, after all - and Nathan, after glowering at her for a moment, decided that what was demanded here was a little revenge, thank you very much. One wing came up out of the water, curling snugly around Ororo before she could react – and tossed her into the lake.
There hadn't been much time to prepare for the impact, and Ororo came up sputtering and spitting out water. "Nathan!" she declared, treading water to keep herself afloat. "This is not part of the exercise!"
"Hah!" It was hard to keep the exoskeleton afloat, and Nathan pushed himself rather awkwardly back into the air, hovering over Ororo and offering her a talon. "Hah, hah. Hah. There, we're even."
With a scowl she accepted the 'hand' up, summoning a small whirlwind as soon as she set foot on shore once again. It whirled about her, whisking most of the water off of her and leaving her hair and clothes slightly mussed. "That was not warranted at all - what happened to you was part of the exercise. I did not plan for it to happen," she said, tilting her head back to lecture the giant glowing bird.
Nathan gave her a wide, bright smile. "And I wouldn't have tossed you in the lake if you hadn't laughed at me."
This stopped the lecture that she had been about to launch into, and she hung her head for a moment, white hair falling into her eyes. When she looked back up, she was smiling. "Fair enough. It just looked so funny..."
"Yes, and so did the drowned cat look when I dropped you into the lake," Nathan said cheerfully. "And hey, this way I don't have to hold a grudge!" he went on, with his best 'I'm a crazy man but you love me anyway, admit it' look.
"Very well. If you practice trying to dodge the rocks better, I will practice only laughing on the inside," Ororo said primly, running a hand through her hair. "It will be a valuable lesson for us both."
It was a fine, cool day outside, the kind that you couldn't help but be thankful for. Though the temperature was steadily dropping as the month went on, the sky that afternoon was thankfully free of clouds. The sun shown brightly down on the grounds of Xavier's Institute, touching the lake and setting off each tiny ripple. Ororo made her way out to the lake, clad in close-fitting, comfortable clothes and carrying a small stopwatch in one hand. She could feel the faint dance of the breeze over her skin and smiled, happy to be out-of-doors with an enjoyable task ahead of her.
Nathan was already waiting for her, looking more than a little sheepish. "Is this really necessary?" he asked, and Ororo was treated to the infamous puppy dog eyes before she could say hello. "I mean, it's not like I've crashed in the exoskeleton on a mission recently or anything..."
“Perhaps not, but I have been told that there are some patches of ground around here that would question your landing technique,” the white-haired woman replied. To her credit, she kept a straight face as she said this, though she had been torn between laughter and stomach-sinking dread when she had heard from Cain about Nathan’s outburst the week before. "And do not think that look will work on me. I have trained long and hard against such nefarious ploys."
"I came over the ridge at the wrong angle, that's all," Nathan protested meekly. "And then the lake wasn't where it should be." Inwardly he was trying to repress laughter himself. He had no real issues with the issue of flying lessons, especially given that Ororo probably had quite a bit she could teach him. But if they're going to start calling me Don Quixote, I might as well live up to the role... Occasionally he thought he was a little perverse-minded.
“Yes, it has quite a nasty habit of moving around when you’re not looking,” Ororo said, smiling now as she shook her head. “So, please correct me if I am mistaken, but it seems perhaps some issues that may be making your flying more difficult are both a lack of fine control, and the interference of emotions to your concentration?”A problem that seems to plague more people than not, she thought dryly to herself.
"I think it's almost more the latter than the former. Although my fine control is shakier than it used to be, and has been since my powers came back," Nathan conceded with a sigh, the smile fading. "Hard to believe I used to do molecular-level TK on a daily basis. But yeah," he admitted, rubbing at the back of his neck, "I do not do well flying when I'm upset. I suspect... well, my TK's instinctive sometimes. It almost feels like there's something interfering with my awareness of my surroundings when I'm flying and angry. Like the incident with the lake. I should have been able to feel that the water was that close."
Nodding, Ororo gave him a sympathetic look. “It can be difficult to realize that once you are in that state, however. Of course the best thing would be to simply calm down, or not to become upset in the first place, but we are only human, after all.”
He gave her a slightly wry look. "And I'm a human being who lost all of his natural mechanisms for controlling his emotions when he was fourteen years old, and lost the artificial mechanisms two years ago. I'd say I'm doing pretty well to be having only the occasional temper tantrum." He smiled, though, a quick self-deprecating smile that took
any edge off his words.
“I understand the inevitability of the occasional lapse,” Ororo replied genuinely. “All too well. And I do not think you need anger management lessons or exercises, though I do have an impressive collection of them now, should you ever be curious. I thought instead we might work on your awareness to your environment while flying under normal circumstances, since I do not have any desire to upset you at this point in time.”
"That would probably be helpful," Nathan said simply. "I think the other problem is that my eyesight shifts when I'm wearing the exoskeleton - I don't see normally."
“Hm.” While Ororo understood this problem, it was slightly more difficult to address. She herself saw differently while she was using her powers, but she couldn’t exactly counsel Nathan to use the exact same technique while flying. “How do you see? What is easiest for you to detect? What do you seem to miss more often?”
"I see the lines of force," Nathan said. "Anything that's actually moving is easier to see than anything that's not... sometimes that gets in the way, though," he said thoughtfully. "Moving objects are brighter. Too bright sometimes. It's like I get blinded briefly by the glare."
“Interesting.” Hanging the stopwatch around her neck and tucking it beneath her collar, Ororo gestured vaguely to the lake and beyond. “Though we could have done this in the Danger Room, I suppose, there is much more room out here to maneuver. I have taken the liberty of putting a few obstacles in place for you… if nothing else, practice will eventually make perfect.”
"... now you're worrying me," Nathan said, but smiled again as light coalesced around him and the exoskeleton took shape. "So what's the objective here?"
“I would merely like you to fly to the quarry and back, at whatever pace you choose. This is really more about observation than achieving a particular goal at the moment. That will come later.” She gave him a not-so-reassuring smirk before lifting off from the ground herself. Apparently she intended to watch from the best vantage point possible.
Nathan looked at her warily as he rose off the ground as well. "All right then... " he said, turning in the direction of the quarry. He got a little more altitude and started to glide. Not attempting to break any speed records; if Ororo had obstacles, he wanted to see them
before he smashed into them.
The first one was easy enough – a medium-sized rock slowly rose off the ground beneath him in a shaky but straight enough path, reaching his altitude about fifty yards ahead of him. It hovered there for a moment, then headed for him quickly, propelled by the strong winds that Ororo was manipulating.
Nathan dodged easily, grabbing it with the exoskeleton's talons and flinging it into the lake. Maybe he could pick up the pace just a little... be more of a moving target. The wings of the exoskeleton beat once, twice, and he picked up speed, barely conscious of the manipulation of forces the maneuver took.
As he did this, several more rocks came up to meet him, working seemingly in tandem now. Ororo experimented with different methods of approach – slow and loopy, quick and sharp – to see which would be spotted the quickest.
Nathan saw the fastest of them first and moved to dodge. This wasn't much different from the Danger Room, really... and no sooner had he thought it, than one of the slower-moving rocks clipped a wing he didn't bring around quite in time. #Crap!# It knocked him off-balance in the air and he had to do a rather ungraceful half-move to avoid hitting the surface of the lake.
Ororo raised an eyebrow over one white-clouded eye, watching the maneuver and setting a few of the rocks back to the ground safely. The rest she drew into a vortex, aiming it at Nate and wondering with a detached curiosity what would happen should he be caught in the middle of it. It seemed almost like it would be a good ambush technique, and she resolved to bring it up to him later, when they were both on the ground.
Oh, there was a pattern to this now, he could see it... Nathan folded the wings of the exoskeleton and dove down through the center of the vortex, coming out at the bottom with just enough room to turn the dive into a climb before he hit the water. Hah! I can so fly, take that, all of you...
The last obstacle, however, wasn't so easy to see. Maybe it was cheating, but sometimes one had to deal with threats one couldn't see. Ororo raised a wall of air and wind, roughly twenty-five yards across and the same height; it would be easy enough to shift it in accordance to his movements.
Nathan caught a strange glittering in the air in front of him. A bit perplexed, he tried to get above it, but it moved with him, and as he hit it he realized what it was. You sneaky... Any further observations on Ororo's deviousness were abruptly cut off by the sheer force of the window, and his sudden struggle to stay in the air. Nathan's jaw clenched, inside the exoskeleton, and the firebird flared sun-bright for a moment, the structure of the exoskeleton reinforcing itself. He shot upwards with a sudden burst of speed.
He's certainly got the speed... Ororo wasn't able to block Nate's ascent quickly enough, and he cleared the barrier with plenty of room to spare. The quarry wasn't far now, and she allowed him to reach it and navigate a turn back before raising another obstacle.
This time she picked up several rocks from the quarry, using one as a decoy in front of him while the others began to assail him from the sides and back. It was good to know how well he sensed things from other directions; even without sight one needed to be aware of the surrounding threats.
He felt them coming and dodged - deftly at first, more clumsily as more of them came in. It wasn't like standing on the ground and blocking multiple objects. So much of his TK was all tied up in the exoskeleton... one of the rocks hit one wing, and this time Nathan did hit the water, with an immense splash.
It wasn't funny, really, not at all, and Ororo had no reason to be laughing. Still, she was, just a little, as Nathan surfaced. Who knew that throwing rocks could be so fun? "Do you need help?" she called across the water, trying to keep her amusement from showing in her voice.
The exoskeleton had not cut out with the impact - what good would it have been if it did that sort of thing, after all - and Nathan, after glowering at her for a moment, decided that what was demanded here was a little revenge, thank you very much. One wing came up out of the water, curling snugly around Ororo before she could react – and tossed her into the lake.
There hadn't been much time to prepare for the impact, and Ororo came up sputtering and spitting out water. "Nathan!" she declared, treading water to keep herself afloat. "This is not part of the exercise!"
"Hah!" It was hard to keep the exoskeleton afloat, and Nathan pushed himself rather awkwardly back into the air, hovering over Ororo and offering her a talon. "Hah, hah. Hah. There, we're even."
With a scowl she accepted the 'hand' up, summoning a small whirlwind as soon as she set foot on shore once again. It whirled about her, whisking most of the water off of her and leaving her hair and clothes slightly mussed. "That was not warranted at all - what happened to you was part of the exercise. I did not plan for it to happen," she said, tilting her head back to lecture the giant glowing bird.
Nathan gave her a wide, bright smile. "And I wouldn't have tossed you in the lake if you hadn't laughed at me."
This stopped the lecture that she had been about to launch into, and she hung her head for a moment, white hair falling into her eyes. When she looked back up, she was smiling. "Fair enough. It just looked so funny..."
"Yes, and so did the drowned cat look when I dropped you into the lake," Nathan said cheerfully. "And hey, this way I don't have to hold a grudge!" he went on, with his best 'I'm a crazy man but you love me anyway, admit it' look.
"Very well. If you practice trying to dodge the rocks better, I will practice only laughing on the inside," Ororo said primly, running a hand through her hair. "It will be a valuable lesson for us both."
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