Doreen & Julian: Early Morning Training

[x-squirrel.livejournal.com]

Early in the morning, Doreen follows Julian out to the quarry and after an ambush helps him train his TK as only squirrelly friends can. After, the two discuss more teenaged topics.

Two power-bars, a towel and a blindfold were packed in Julian's bag as he finished filling his sports bottle with cold water from the Brita pitcher from the refrigerator. The sun had risen over the Eastern horizon less than a half-an-hour before hand, to which Julian had promptly risen and donned his swimsuit and under-armor. Today, he was going to start his new powers training regiment, unsupervised and more out of spite toward Inez's comments during their recent trip into town than anything else. Today was the first day toward taking control of his powers and while he was tired, he was also excited.

"Death from.... BEHIND!" she had to take a moment to revise what was a silly attack phrase at best, but it didn't change the outcome of a flying tackle from Doreen. Who had saw him leaving and decided to follow in a last minute sort of way.

Unfortunately for his feral friend, Julian's nerves were just slightly frayed and her surprise attack met a semi-invisible TeeKay shield as he ducked. Looking behind himself to find her sprawled out on the ground, a groan coming from her lips, and an angry Monkey Joe, Julian's eyes went wide. "Doreen?! Are you okay?"

Doreen started to laugh, which managed to calm Monkey Joe's angry squeaks. She sat up and did a check, nothing was broken, but she had a very hard head. And very hard to break just about everything else, "That's cheating," she said, petting Monkey Joe.

"Come on, Dori," he smiled in relief that she was alright. "Don't sneak up on someone like that- you're totally, lucky I didn't blast you onto the roof!" Extending a hand, Julian helped Doreen to her feet before bending down after bending down and giving Monkey Joe an affectionate scritch on the head. "What are you two doing up this early?"

"I would've been okay, and I was hungry so I was hanging out in the kitchen and I could smell you walking by, but don't take that the bad way, I don't mean that you stink," Doreen amended, "Just that I knew you were walking by and I wanted to see what you were doing.

With a grin, Julian made a summoning gesture with his head and started down the trail with the duo fast in tow. "I started thinking after Professor Logan beat me at cards a while back about how I take my powers for granted. I lost them and now they're back and I want to make sure I don't let them go to waste." He pointed down the trail toward the quarry, "So now, I'm going to the quarry where I'll be practicing the art of making large rocks into smaller rocks through collision...or playing a game we like to call, asteroids."

"Isn't he scary?" Doreen said, "And that's nothing like the video game, where you have to blow up asteroids with ships but I bet that could still be fun!"

"Professor Logan? I don't know about scary, but he's definitely a good card player." He started down the path toward the lower parts of the quarry. "And I don't know, this will be the first time I've tried this. How's your training been going?"

"He's really, really scary," Doreen said, "I don't know if he tries to be. But he is. And okay, I guess. I get to run around a lot so I like it. I can't turn off running around though. I always am."

He smiled while dropping his bag on a rock, "What about dodging stuff? If you've been working on that maybe we can work on this together." Cracking his knuckles, Julian started to stretch out and warm up for what he was about to do, identifying several large rocks around the vast flat area.

"I could do that!" Doreen said, "I bet you won't be able to hit me."

Julian smiled, "I hope you're right, Dori." They entered the large stone quarry, which was still dim in the early morning sunlight. Dropping his bag on the ground Keller began to stretch. "Actually, let's make it a game. I'll float a bunch of rocks up and put on my blindfold. Then you need to push them towards me and I'll try to keep them away or dodge them as they get closer."

"I think I can do that, as long as you don't throw me back again like you did when I jumped you," Doreen said happily.

With a smirk, Julian tied the blindfold around his head and sat down on the ground, "I'll try my best not to." He waited a moment, trying to clear his mind, "You ready?"

"Totally," Doreen said, a slight lilt of a valley girl accent dotting the speech, "I'm ready when you are. Let's do this!"

A slight wave of nervousness had to be suppressed as he focused outward around himself. He began to identify various chunks of stone that would suit their needs. After finding about thirty of them, Julian stretched his hands out in front of him and opened them, palms down. At the same time, a few dozen rocks gently lifted off the ground and hovered a few feet in the air. He began to rotate them in place, feeling the hand holds and weight of each one and waiting for Doreen's first volley.

“I have told you how cool this looks, right?” she said before she got started. There were really two ways she could go about this. She could kick them, but they might hurt him or she could just do what he asked. She looked at Monkey Joe, who sort of shrugged in return. She set her squirrel down and told him to find some cover as she picked a couple of the rocks to send right toward her friend.

Little did she know that he could feel her hands on the rock as its trajectory was changed. It would have been easy to send it right back at her, but that wasn't what this exercise would be about. With a small smirk, Julian sent another chunk of stone flying toward one of them. With a crack, they smashed together, breaking one of them into two pieces and sending the other rock flying off at an angle. Keeping things in motion, more stones started to float off the ground, a pale green surrounding them. With a slight exertion, he began to curve things back into the paths they had been in. Eyes still closed, Julian shouted, "Nice try, but if that's the best you've got...."

“Hey, you said push,” Doreen said, “If you didn’t want me to push you should’ve said something. How’s… this!” she asked, and jumped kicked one of the rocks, this one aimed to go right above his head.

Julian, surprised at the sudden increase in velocity, adjusted two rocks to intercept the one that had just been lobbed toward him. While the first one missed by inches, the second knocked into the flying hunk of limestone and sent it whirling to the side. Seeing that Dori was finally in the game, Julian spread the floating rocks into three rings of various heights, all still spinning in the same direction. With a chuckle he widened the outer ring, slowing its movement as rocks shifted toward his friend.

Laughing, Doreen started having fun with it. Rocks were jump kicked and otherwise athletically volleyed towards Julian. In hopes of getting SOMETHING past his shields.

The increased frequency and speed of the stones made concentrating harder. There were just over forty rocks in the air when the first one impacted his personal shield, sending them all tumbling to the west for a moment before Julian recovered. Putting his mind on the task, Julian reversed the middle ring of stones and began a wave pattern with them, rolling the rocks at various intervals as if they were on some long snaking roller coaster. A slight increase in speed for the inner ring and he was ready for her next assault, doubting anything could get through the spinning wall of debris.

Doreen was having a great time. She was getting both acrobatic and creative with how she was moving. Just because she was at home in the trees didn’t mean she wasn’t able to move easily over any other type of terrain. Or like, on her hands and flipping around and kicking and throwing rocks, often in rabid succession. She laughed.

This was great.

The rocks always seemed to be pinging off the inner circle, which was a flurry of movement at this point, kicking up dust and more debris into the air as Julian focused on expanding the thickness. He felt with his mind, seeking bigger stones sticking out of the rock walls around them, loosly held by the surrounding sandstone. With a flourish of the hand, two large boulders cracked loose from the cliff face behind him and began to wheel- despite their not being round- toward the two students.

At the last moment, just before they hit the outer ring, they veered off in either direction and began to curve around toward Doreen. He knew it was dangerous, but he stopped the outer ring floating where it was to give her somewhere to escape to.

Her reaction time was next to nothing. It was odd, getting this close to an animal state without slipping over all the way. This was training for her too, she didn’t know if Julian realized just how much. Dodging was easy, especially when they really weren’t out to hit eachother. Just get close calls. In fact, she was able to use one of them to get a great angle kick on one of the ring stones.

“Catch!”

Julian had less time to react than he'd given her, but simply increased the speed, pitch and height of the inner ring to make a more or less impenetrable layer of spinning stones. The change began to draw the other things in at more of an angle, unfortunately, this meant Julian forgot one of the laws of physics that made this a very bad idea. For every action...

The stone impacted on the inner cone and spun off back toward the outer ring. Upon impact, several stones flew at Julian and hit him in the head and chest, knocking the air out of him and breaking his concentration. The various rocks that had been floating didn't stop, but they were no longer in his control either. Those who had been on a downswing tumbled harmlessly back onto the dusty ground, while those on the rise flew off in different angles- stone missiles assailing the quarry walls.

“Ohmigosh!” Doreen scrambled to get Monkey Joe and was able to avoid tumbling rocks. After things settled she started laughing, “I broke the game, didn’t I?”

Slowly, Julian sat up, rubbing his head. His shields had absorbed the blows, but he hadn't expected them. Now he hurt, but that was part of training- next time he wouldn't make the same mistake. With a wry smile he looked to Doreen, "Don't be silly, you won that round, but we're not near being done yet."

***

An hour later, or so, Doreen couldn't really tell, the quarry looked like a warzone and she was breathing heavily, but grinning ear to ear, not caring that it showed off her bucked teeth. "That... was so fun. I don't think I can do anymore though..." Even she had a limited amount of energy.

At hearing his friend concede defeat, he let the fifty or so rocks fall to the ground amongst the other rubble. Panting, he slumped against a pile of rocks before shouting out, "Is Monkey Joe okay?"

"Yeah," Doreen said, "He's over there," she nodded with her head where Monkey Joe poked his own head up from behind some well placed rocks. "He's really good at hiding when he has to be."

Chuckling through his pants he slowly got up and made his way toward the bag he'd accidentally buried under several rocks. Opening it, he found the unpunctured power bars- though they were well and truly crushed. Slouching toward his friends he tossed one to Dori, "You can probably use some granola, not sure if you had breakfast or not."

Monkey Joe caught the bar mid air, and brought it the rest of the way to Doreen, who was sitting on the ground, "I had a bit," she said, opening it up and feeding her friend first, "But really not all that much because then I saw you leaving and I decided to follow, but I was having toaster strudels and marshmallows."

Julian sighed, "I absolutely hate your metabolism, Dori." Taking a seat across from her, he realized that he would need to clean the mess he'd made up. With a sigh he opened his bar and poured the crumbles into his mouth, thinking about how far he'd come in his training since arriving at the mansion. "Do they have you working with anyone, Dori? For your powers I mean."

Doreen nodded, "I was working with Mr. Espinosa some. And I work with Kyle and sometimes with Mr. Sefton," she said, "I have the self defense stuff, but I don't really like that. I don't want to hurt people, but we have to work on me not freaking out," she said. Freaking out meaning going squirrel. She ate the food while thinking about stuff. "It's going to be kind of hard. How am I going to be a super hero if I can't punch someone?"

Chewing his food with a slight crunch, Julian thought about it, "There has to be some character out there who fights crime without throwing a punch."

"Well, Oracle kind of does. She used to be Batgirl, but then the Joker shot her. So she used to punch people. There are a few others out there... I just don't want to hurt someone. I'm not as weak as I look, you know? And these," she held up her hands, "could skewer someone if I tried. I mean, they go right from wood and they'll dent metal if I put enough force behind it..."

"That's pretty badass, Dori," Julian said with a smirk. He finished his food and crumpled the wrapper, keeping it in his hand. "You'll figure it out though," with a slight movement of his hand he pushed a pile of the rubble back against the rock wall.

"...I didn't want to be that though," she said simply, petting Monkey Joe. She had been happy being a Daddy's girl. Rich, but no richer than other Beverly Hills people. And though she had always been a comic nerd and general geek, this wasn't ever something she had really wanted. "I mean, I love what I can do," she said looking over at her friend, "But you know what this was like. I love it here, because of that." She could kind of talk to Julian about all of this. After all, he was her friend.

With a smile, Jules waved again and pulled up a lump of rock beside Dori and Monkey Joe, "You okay, Dee?" He was tempted to float his bag over, but still wasn't entirely sure he was up to not tearing it to pieces.

"Yeah," she said, "Just thinking about stuff, I guess."

After a moment of silence, Julian decided to press a bit, "Want to talk about it?"

Doreen thought about that and shrugged, "It's not really important stuff. Like stuff that shouldn't matter, you know?"

"I'd like to hear about it though," he smiled. "You can trust me, Doreen."

"I know," Doreen said, "I know, I really do. It's just... going to sound really, really weird."

Julian blinked, "Dori...we live in a mansion where a bunch of superheroes have their lair. There is an experimental plane under our basketball court, I can move things with my mind and you can talk to squirrels....weird is kind of relative."

"That's... that's a different kind of weird. And that's not weird at all, that's cool. I just.. I don't know. Just as friends and stuff... I mean, we're going home soon and yeah... and this will sound weird, but I mean just as friends do you think I'm cute?" she asked. Her appearance after she had grown the tail and claws, after her teeth had bucked out more than normal, had always bothered her a bit.

And they were going to be going back to L.A. Where looks were everything. And it got her thinking.

Julian smiled and thought to himself, 'Girls,' with an internal chuckle. "Doreen.... You. Are. Beautiful."

"...Really?" she asked, her eyes about as big as they could get.

He reached out and took her hand, continuing his reassuring smile, "If you weren't one of my best friends...." Giving her hand a squeeze he shrugged and winked. "I wouldn't want our relationship any other way though."

"Now you're just flattering me," she said, sticking out her tongue. She was grinning though. "Thanks. Told ya it was weird."

With a sigh, Julian shook his head, "Not really. What about me though? Am I pretty?" He stuck his tongue back out at her and chuckled.

Doreen just started giggling, "I dunno. How many girls have started fights over you since you got here?"

With a roll of his eyes, Julian shook his head, "Only two and it was a misunderstanding...besides, after prom, not a one of the girls around here thinks of me like that."

"Well, you're you. Someone will come around sooner or later," Dori said with a smile. It was part of what he did, at least how she remembered it.

Julian chuckled again and sighed, with a shake of his head, "Nah, it's probably a good thing that they don't want anything to do with me. It's nice to just be a member of the group rather than an object of desire, ya know?"

"Well... I dunno what it's like to be the latter, but I'm really liking being part of a group myself. So I get you," Doreen said.

With a smile and and slight oomph, Julian pushed himself up and held out his hand, "Wanna head inside and watch some Avatar, I just need to tidy up here."

"Okay! Do you need any help?" Doreen asked.

His smile turned cocky as he made a pushing motion toward one of the piles, sending it sliding toward the rock walls. "Nah, I got this."