xp_logs | Nathan and Julian, backdated to March 3rd

Backdated to March 3rd. Another training session, and this time Julian has a particular request.

It was Tuesday and now that Nathan was back, that meant it was time for powers training. After the weekend and his date, Julian had finally decided on a direction to go with his sessions. The flight over New York City, and the fact that they wouldn't have needed a plane if he knew how, had started him thinking about learning to fly. He made his way down the now familiar path toward the boat house and lake, remembering the day that his mentor had left. He'd had to hear he was back second hand and that wasn't something that he was going to let the old man live down. Today, though, he'd try to get through whatever task he would be assigned and then ask Nathan if he'd teach him to fly- hopefully there would be time to do so.

Nathan was waiting for him on the dock. "Quarry again today," he greeted Julian casually. "I think we'll leave the fine control exercises to another day. I want to see if you've been practicing your multitasking while I've been gone."

He stopped at the foot of the dock and waited for Nathan to catch up to him before the pair started walking toward the quarry. Julian thought it would be best if he chose his moment carefully, so starting off with a lesson request would probably be a bad idea. "I think you'll be impressed," he smirked. The truth was that he had practiced, but not as much as he probably should have. In all honesty, he'd expected his mentor to be gone longer.

"Never assume I'll be impressed," Nathan said with a perfectly straight - even grave - face. "Or want me to be impressed. Impressed does not necessarily mean good things."

Julian was confused, usually Nathan was in a much better mood than this. "Oh, um," he started, wondering if he should ask if his grim company was alright, but thought that might make things worse. "Sorry." They continued down the path to the quarry in relative silence. As they approached some bushes a clutch of pheasants burst forth from the underbrush and flew away- nature was not making his desire to make his request any easier.

"Something on your mind, Julian?" Nathan asked after a moment, quite patiently. He actually knew precisely what was on Julian's mind, but he wasn't going to say that. The boy needed some more work on disciplining his thoughts, but that could wait until they'd gotten his TK under better control.

He thought about saying something, but knew it could wait. "No, nothing. What did you have in mind for today- moving rocks again?" He was a little peeved over the earlier curtness, but not enough to not be able to train. He tried to put the mental images he'd come up with- mostly with him soaring by his parent's private jet or flying with Angel- out of his head. Up ahead a turkey crossed the path...no, nature was definitely not making this easy. "I'm excited to get back into training."

"You know, training isn't all about me dictating to you what we're doing on any given day. You can direct this, too - to a degree," Nathan said, hiding his amusement well. "So. Try me."

Julian stopped walking and sighed, he took a moment to think of how he wanted to phrase the request. Then nodded to himself and looked up at Nathan who'd stopped a few feet away. He wanted to explain his desire to learn this particular skill and articulate the reasons why it would be helpful, but "I'd like to learn to fly," was what ended coming out.

"Mmm. Why?" Nathan asked, nothing but calm interest in his expression.

The fact he hadn't been written off immediately wasn't a bad sign, but Julian didn't see much acquiescence to the thought either. "Um, I'd like to learn to fly because a lot of my- well, some of my friends can do it." All of the reasons were suddenly gone, his mind was a bleak wasteland, "It'd be...neat. I'm not explaining this right." He took a second to gather himself before continuing. "Okay. It's just something I'd like to learn and I think it could help with my focus and motor control since I wouldn't want to break my arms or anything. I've heard that some teeks can do it and I'd like to be one of them."

Nathan resumed walking towards the quarry, letting Julian follow. "Flying is neat," he said amiably enough, after a moment. "It's probably one of the mutant abilities that baseline humans actually envy. And telekinetics can do it, you're right. But." He paused just long enough to let Julian process the 'but' before he continued. "We've talked enough about telekinetic theory at our lessons that you should be able to tell me why telekinetic flight is a bit... excessively challenging at times."

Julian thought for a moment before answering, carefully trying to get the answer right. "I guess if you're flying you might not be concentrating and then you could start to fall and then you'd panic and wouldn't be able to catch yourself." It seemed like it could be right, but there were a bunch of possible answers.

"That's one concern," Nathan conceded. "Your safety depends on your concentration. And when you're flying, there can be all kinds of things that break that. That's not necessarily different from any other mutant flier, though." A sparrow took off from a nearby tree and Nathan pointed at it. "How does the bird fly?"

"It flaps it's wings and creates air currents then steers with it's tail feathers." The gears slowly started to turn, but they didn't quite make the connection.

"Think about the weight of the bird, too. A bird's bones are hollow. It's one of the reasons they can fly. So what does that mean for us, when we want to fly?"

"We have to," Julian thought carefully, "make ourselves lighter?" He had a feeling that wasn't the right answer, but the only other thing that came to mind was hollowing out his bones and that didn't seem any better.

"Mmm. Problematic, isn't it? Given that we can't actually make our bones hollow." Nathan hit an uneven patch of ground and sucked in his breath sharply as it jolted his hip. "One of the really odd things about telekinesis is that we don't wind up moving ourselves when we move things. I could go down to the hangar and lift the Blackbird without leaving any kind of mark on the floor where I was standing. It's really not clear how that works - but how do you think that affects us when we fly?"

"But it's all mind over matter, isn't it? Size matters not and stuff...wait, it doesn't show a mark on the floor, but doesn't it show in your mind?" He remembered the nose bleeds he used to get when his powers first manifested and the nightmares he would get when his telekinesis would run rampant at night. "Your mind absorbs the impact rather than your surroundings." He tried to apply that to flying, "So, if you're lifting yourself you're creating a loop? I mean, you're absorbing the impact upon yourself." Julian sighed, he had no idea if he was right or not and reestablished his wish that Nathan would give him a straight answer someday.

They'd reached the edge of the quarry, and Nathan reached out a hand to stop Julian where he was. "Stay right there," he said, and walked onwards himself, turning back towards Julian once he was far enough away. "You may have seen this out the window some night, I'm not sure, but I know I haven't shown it to you yet. So."

Golden light spilled down Nathan's body in a glowing cascade, the nimbus of visible telekinetic expanding outwards and taking the shape of his firebird exoskeleton rather more slowly than normal; Nathan still wasn't sure just how much Julian saw of the lines of force, but there was no reason not to give him the opportunity to see this in 'slow motion'. Great fiery wings extended outwards, fluttering slightly as Nathan shrugged his shoulders. Then he launched himself into the air with a light push, only enough to take him ten feet or so off the ground.

"This is how I fly," he said, his voice not at all muffled by the exoskeleton. "It's slow and it's awkward, but on the plus side, it's a flying bird-shaped tank."

Julian was awestruck, his mouth actually hanging slightly open. "Whoa," was all he could manage as his mentor lowered himself back to the ground and the firebird dissipated. "That was awesome." He started trying to figure out how Nathan had done that- as far as Julian knew, his mentor was not a pyrokinetic. For a split second, he thought about just trying to lift himself up in the air, but then remembered what had happened every other time he'd tried that- mostly a lot of faceplants in the backyard. There had to be some trick to it.

"It just looks like pyrokinesis," Nathan said, picking up on the thought and moving towards Julian, letting the exoskeleton just start to take shape around his arm again. "Touch it. See?" he said as the boy did. "Solid." He let it collapse again. "It's a construction of telekinetic shields - layers and layers of them, really. It sort of... feeds back upon itself, I suppose you'd say, to provide the motion necessary for movement as well. It's been handy at times. Although I can't use my TK outside it, when I'm wearing it. It pretty much draws all of my power."

He was still impressed, "Wow," continued to be his mantra for a few moments more before his head came together. "So, we have to turn ourselves into birds?" He tried to imagine himself wreathed in green flame, soaring around in a giant bird, but it just didn't come together. "But, if it takes all of your energy, how long can you fly?"

Nathan laughed. "Well, not literally turn yourself into a bird, no." His gray eyes were wistful suddenly. "I just do the actual bird-thing to remember someone. And I should have been clearer," he said more briskly, "by 'using all my power' I mean both holding the construct and creating movement. I don't fly really well, mind you - I'm slower than the usual in-town speed limit. On the bright side, if I ever wanted to take out a building, I could crashland and do a pretty good job of it."

Still eager to learn Julian continued, "How long did it take you to learn?" Images of himself plowing through buildings suddenly came to mind, but he suppressed them, not wanting to seem eager for destruction. He wasn't keen on the bird shape, but if that didn't matter, then maybe he could try something else.

"I'd say I'm still learning," Nathan said. "The exoskeleton itself -well, without getting too much into detail you probably don't want to hear right not, I inherited the experience on the subconscious level." His lips twitched. "Long, long story. What I'm trying to get around to saying is that you shouldn't be trying to learn a telekinetic exoskeleton right off the bat. Have you ever seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Or the Matrix?"

Julian nodded, "I saw the Matrix and its first sequel, but that one kind sucked, so I didn't bother with the third one. Isn't Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon a kung fu movie?" He vaguely remembered some buzz around that movie when he was younger. "I need to learn to bend spoons?"

"No, you need to learn how to do this." A light push of telekinesis and Nathan was in the tree above Julian, his weight balanced perfectly on a branch that should never have held it. He lept to the next tree over, landing as lightly as a leaf. "You see what I'm getting at? It's not flying. It's sort of a middle ground."

As his mentor bounced from tree to tree, Julian nodded in understanding. "Learn to walk before I learn to run, so what's step one?" He was so eager to get started that he'd completely forgotten that they were here for an entirely different lesson. "I'm ready."