xp_logs | Thirteen Days: The Vomit Comet

There's only one surefire way to replicate zero-gravity while still inside the atmosphere. Fortunately, the X-Men happen to have a jet that can do the job, but Jean and Nathan discover that telekinesis in zero-g is trickier than they expected.

He had no idea who had so thoughtfully left the airsickness bags in the Blackbird's cargo hold. A whole box of them, velcroed to the inside of the hull. It had been a great idea, in any case, Nathan thought somewhat dizzily as he tried to convince himself that yes, he was finished making use of his. Really. It wasn't as if he'd eaten anything this morning, prior to this training session.

"I am not enjoying myself," he muttered at Jean. The Blackbird was flying a normal flight path right now, to give them a few minutes to recover before the next parabola, which would give them yet another half-minute of weightlessness. It was one of the few elements of spaceflight training they were equipped to duplicate, and it was pretty important, all things considered.

He still kind of wanted to die.

Jean, luckily, was doing a little better. Her stomach was by no means settled and calm, but she'd managed not to lose control, yet. "You don't look like you are, no," she agreed, eying him a little worriedly. "I should have thought of anti-nausea pills - someone else obviously did," she added, waving to a small box on the wall which had gone unnoticed.

Nathan disposed of the bag and grabbed the box of pills instead. "How thoughtful. Want one? Or six?" There wasn't any water here in the cargo hold, so he dry-swallowed two and then handed the box to Jean. "Is it my imagination or is it less easy to use one's TK in zero-g than you'd think?" They'd been rattling around the inside of the cargo hold like pinballs during their weightless periods.

"Certainly more complicated," Jean agreed, taking the box and securing it back to the wall. "I never realized how much I automatically compensated for gravity."

The Blackbird started to climb, and Nathan took a deep breath and grabbed the nearest handhold as the g-forces started to increase. "This is going to suck a lot if we can't figure out the right balance," he said. "Knocking ourselves flying backwards into our teammates is not an option."

"Knocking things about in general is not an option," Jean agreed, adjusting her own grip as the increased g-force of the climb pushed at her. "In theory it would be possible to hold things steady by creating equal force in all directions, yes? But keeping them all equal is the hard part."

"And doing it here when we're not fighting the Brotherhood is supposed to be the easy part," Nathan muttered, taking a deep breath as the Blackbird reached the top of its arc - and started to descend. Their feet came up off the ground and Nathan tried to concentrate on Jean's suggestion, exerting an equal push in all directions.

And he found himself hanging, quite still, in the air.

Jean was slightly less stable - she kept tending to edge 'up', the extra force which would normally be fighting gravity pushing her head towards the Blackbird's ceiling. But it was more restrained than last time, the corrections downward less and less severe. "Doing better," she muttered.

Counting in his head - they had twenty-five seconds of weightlessness, no more - Nathan gave himself a push, heading for the other side of the cargo hold. It felt very strange, but at least this time he didn't hit the inside of the hull.

"I know my problem," he said, grunting as he grabbed the handle. "All those years of making like Keanu in the Matrix. The 'push' has gotten to be instinctive." It took a great deal of focused power to leap from ground level to a rooftop, or just as much braking power when you made the trip vice-versa.

"And now it all has to be so small and controlled..." Neither of which Jean found instinctive - her concentration was absolute and it still took her another few seconds to get to a point where she was absolutely still.

"And this is all just movement. The idea of trying to be this controlled in combat conditions makes me wish I'd taken a few more of those pills." But they would figure it out, and do it promptly. It wasn't as if they really had an option. Nathan reoriented himself in the air, concentrated, and managed a rather neat 'landing' on the deck. "Eighteen seconds, Jean, you might want to get down here."

"To be fair, no ones going to care if we bash Toad or the others about a little, so long as we don't damage the station's stability." Her feet were still largely pointed at the deck of the plane, so she spent more of her attention on descending cleanly.

"True enough. Personally I'm going to make a point of bashing around anyone I don't recognize, since we have no real idea what these new recruits can do." They had some information on the prisoners who'd been used as the bait in the Russians' trap for Magneto, but it wasn't as if anyone knew precisely which of them Magneto had taken with him. There were more unaccounted for than could possibly be on that space station. "Them, or the man himself. I owe him a concussion," Nathan said with a brief, cold smirk as gravity abruptly returned.

Jean had still been an inch or so off the deck, so she staggered slightly as she dropped with a touch more abruptness than she'd expected, catching herself against one of the handholds. "Yes, definitely," she said as she straightened. "Share the brain trauma around. He's certainly earned it."