Artie and Marie-Ange, Monday afternoon

[x-artie.livejournal.com]

Powers training, Marie-Ange's way. Backdated to Monday.



Artie stopped outside the building Marie Ange's office was in and fished his phone out his pocked and quickly tapped in "hi marie ange its artie. how do i get into ur office? do i have to dodge a receptionist or anything?"

It was easier to just text back "on the way down" and come get Artie rather than have him have to navigate past Cammie and have to try to give him directions to her specific office and run into the potential cloud of grouchiness that was Remy. Besides, it gave her a break from going through more of Betsy's files. He settled back to wait, leaning against the building to wait. Artie raised a hand and waved slightly when Marie Ange appeared.

Marie-Ange waved back, and then opened the door, holding it open for Artie "You may have to suffer through my lack of practice with ASL until I remember more." She said, as he walked inside. "But if it is like the other languages I know, it should come back quickly."

"thats fine," Artie said, projecting the words against the wall. "ill just stick to things that i know you can understand." It was just easier for everyone if he did that.

"You are not going to want to do that once I ask you to start trying to make more than one image at once." Marie-Ange said, with a slightly mischievous smile. "But in return, I will teach you better curse words in new languages. Because what use is going to powers training with people who all can swear in six languages if you do not get to learn new profanity, no?"

"ur going to break my powers aren't you?" Artie asked, inwardly glad to be doing some actual powers training for the first time in years. "i'm looking forward to the sweary bit."

Marie-Ange laughed. "Of course not. If you start clutching your head or try to... what would be your equivalent of screaming? Trying to put your tongue in your ears?" She poked the elevator button with one finger. "I will at least give you an aspirin. Or vicodin. I am not entirely cruel. I am not Remy. But if you are capable of making fake IDs and trying to copy money, perhaps we need to see what you can do before I ask you to do anything like try to copy a person or a large object."

"ive only tried the fake money. i don't know that i could pass it off and i don't need to do it so its a lot of trouble to get in just to see if i can." Artie leaned against the elevator wall and tried to look nonchalant.

"Counterfeit money is easier to just have printed." Marie-Ange offered. "Then you can use the right kind of paper. But in a pinch, you could change a dollar to ten or fifty, no?" She looked at Artie carefully, assessingly. He was certainly not the little boy she'd known, and there was something there... that she would have to investigate later, perhaps with her cards. "So you are good at very small details. What about movement? Can you make them move?"

"i figure i'd just get caught if i tried that" Artie offered, before looping the text. "moving imgs r easier if i attach them to things" he said, before wrapping a layer of blue scales arounf his hands and face, and waving his left hand for emphasis. "did i get my ears? Missed lst time."

"You should not do that around anyone who has an instinctive urge to stab Mystique." Marie-Ange suggested lightly. "And yes, you 'got' your ears." She reached out and prodded Artie in the forehead. "So they are not solid at all. Can you make a mirror?"

Artie blinked. He hadn't even thought of Mystique when he did it and made a note to file the trick under "ahahaha, no." Trying to avoid the headache he knew was coming, Artie simply nodded, and then stopped walking. He twisted slightly so that he could see Marie-Ange and held out one hand. A smooth, foot-wide mirror floated in front of it, reflecting her. He dropped the blue scales and focussed purely on echoing her movements, studying Marie-Ange, rather than the mirror to do so

"So you have to see what is in the mirror to mirror it." Marie-Ange 'tested' her reflection a few times, testing the amount of time it lagged behind her movements - not very much, but enough to notice. "But you cannot just make a mirror and let it reflect?"

Artie pulled out his notepad, shaking his head. No. Light has to hit something b4 you can get reflection. He waved a hand through the mirror. can't reflect if there's nothing there to reflect off. Cld make fake mirror but u'd have to put it someplace where reflection ≠ changing.

"I think we have found the first thing you should work on then." Marie-Ange pulled out a large bottle of extra-strength aspirin from the depths of her desk drawer. "Light has to reflect off your images. You can see them, that is light reflecting. A mirror is just more complex."

OK. We'll try mirrors, see if it'll work. You can deal with my headache after, Artie wrote before settling back into Marie-Ange's visitor's chair and bringing up the projection.

"That is what the aspirin is for, and at worst, I will look the other way while you 'borrow' a vicodin." And then Marie-Ange would 'borrow' Doug's car and drive Artie back to the mansion, or see if Amanda would drive him back.

KK. Wait - how do mirrors even work? he scrawled, trying to see if he could get the projection to do its own thing and maybe start being a mirror all by itself.

"I have no idea." Marie-Ange answered honestly. "I just make it up as I go along. Maybe you cannot do it because you think you cannot?" She dug in the same desk drawer and pulled out a makeup compact with a built-in mirror. Copying a real item was harder than making an image from a flat drawing but not so hard, and a moment later, a twin to the compact appeared on the desk. "I am not even sure how that works. Can you make illusions if your eyes are closed?

Artie blinked at that. It figured that Marie-Ange would get the really cool version of this power and then shrugged. He'd never actually tried. He let the attempt at a mirror go, only to picture the desk in front of himself, fake beige wood grain with plastic edges. There was a stack of papers to his right, the outermost one three inches from the edge of the desk, several post-it notes on the computer monitor, spaced about half an inch apart, the edges visible around the side of the monitor (flatscreen and Phillips) and a couple of loose pens and pencils. The light came mostly from above and the window, the two sources combining to leave only light shadows below things and Marie-Ange's hand was a quarter of an inch from the real makeup compact, the fake one three inches in front and two inches to the left of the other. He'd seen the desk, even if he hadn't seen enough to grasp more than a basic suggestion of what was on the papers. He decided, however, go for something simpler than reproducing a scale version of the desk and brought up a yellow smiley face, letting it float six inches above the desk, between Marie-Ange's hand and the keyboard and wished he could ask if it was working without opening his eyes.

A giggle - almost - escaped Marie-Ange's mouth, although she cut it off by covering her mouth with her hands. "You are trying to make a yellow smiley face, I hope?" She asked. "So you can do something I cannot then, I have to have my eyes open and be able to see to make images I have any control over."

The boy opened his eyes, letting the image go with some relief and raised an eyebrow. "What did I end up making?" he asked, projecting the text onto Marie-Ange's desk and then rubbing his temples as a spike of pain ripped through his head. Owww....

"A smiley face, and I think a migraine for yourself." Marie-Ange said, and pushed a pair of pills across the desk, and through the letters. "And now you are going to take these, drink a bottle of water and then I am going to drive you back to the mansion because you will be ... " Stoned. She was going to get a seventeen year old boy stoned on pain medicine. But it was for his own good.