log: Matt and Kyle

[x-daredevil.livejournal.com]

After beating up his roommate, Matt goes for his punishment. He ends with powers exploration instead



After school ended for the summer, instead of kicking back and relaxing, Matt showed up to the tool shed to find out what Kyle wanted him to do for punishment. He was surprised, as far as he knew, his social worker hadn't been called about this. Just....the punishment. And a talk about not beating up his roommate, which Matt had agreed to and ignored. "Kyle?" he called, not hearing the other man. "You around?" He had no idea what Kyle had planned for him in terms of yard work stuff.

Kyle was around - if you counted doing paperwork which he hated and half-listening to a baseball game, which he did not hate. "Yo, one sec!" He hit mute on the laptop - the game wasn't teams he cared about, it was just background noise, and got up to open the door to the shed. "So, do I owe myself five bucks and they told you that you're stuck doing whatever nasty job I make you do for a couple weeks?" He'd been on the same 'grounding' himself a few times, which hell, was at least part of the reason he'd gotten the job.

"Yeah, yeah," if Matt could have rolled his eyes, glasses or not, they would have. "But that beats getting shipped off somewhere else for being a problem. They didn't report to my social worker at all, well, that's what I was told. Which is pretty bad ass," and really, so long as his social worker was not breathing down his neck, he did not mind whatever it was Kyle wanted him to do.

"Yeah, they do that. I'm pretty sure if the judge who signed off on letting me be here way back in the day knew half the shit I got up to, I'd still be in jail." Kyle said, grinning. "So, I got two chores for you, one short and one long, which nasty-ass, stinky, horrible job that's gonna make you want to take six showers do you wanna hear about first?" he had to admit, this was kinda fun.

Wrinkling his nose, Matt sighed. Well, he had agreed to it and all that, "Uh...I guess the short one first? Get it over with?" Since he had to choose...there was really no good answer. "I got a question for you too, if you've got a minute."

Kyle's grin got even broader, not that Matt could see it. "Sure, question away. We gotta walk across the grounds anyway, cause your shorter but stinkier chore's in the stables." He picked up a box on his way out of the toolshed, carrying it up on one shoulder. "And before you ask, I'll move the horses before you get started, I'm not into setting the blind kid into a stable fulla giant animals."

Tensing at the mention of stables, Matt relaxed again when the horses would be gone. Good. "Remember," he pointed out to Kyle, "city boy. My idea of a park is Central Park," he reached for Kyle automatically, hand on Kyle's elbow. "So...when we were in the sewers, before I attacked you..." he did feel bad about that too, "like, I could see something. It was weird. Like...an outline. Everything was still black, it wasn't with my eyes. But like, my head. It was fucking weird."

"Yeah, you know we have a moose right?" Kyle asked. "and what? I mean, okay, back up, and use different words to explain that because right now you're not making any sense. You saw something but you didn't see anything?" He led his new temporary stinky-duty assistant carefully across the grounds, occasionally mentioning things like divots or steering both of them around muddy places where the lawn took occasional abuse from the residents.

"A moose?!" Matt's voice rose an octave and cracked. "No way. Is this place a zoo or something?!" Clearing his throat to get his voice back where it was supposed to be, he continued, "Um. I dunno. Like...I guess you dropped something and it was clattering around? And the whole sewer lit up like a Christmas tree in my head, all white and fuzzy. I could see like...not details. Outlines, I guess. Where the walls were. And parts of the floor. Not everything, not all of it, but...I could see stuff."

"Okay, hold on a second." Kyle stopped carefully so as to not topple Matt over. "Tabs dropped her flashlight, and you heard it, that makes sense. And then you knew where stuff was?" He adjusted the box on his shoulder carefully, and started them off again towards the stables. "Okay, so I was gonna have you muck out the stalls, because damn, horses poop a lot, but you mind trying, like, an experiment first? We've got some empty stalls, lets see what happens if I drop some boots on the ground with you in it."

"Uh...yeah, basically," that was what happened, yeah. And like Matt was going to say no to postponing the horse poop? "Yeah, sure. I'm good for that. Whatever you want."

The rest of the conversation while they crossed the grounds was Kyle's explanation of the moose and stories about Laurie and her pig. Once they arrived at the stables, Kyle did a quick check to make sure the stall he thought was empty was actually empty, and unlatched it and then led Matt in. "Okay, so there's clean straw in this one, no worries about poo. I'm gonna go stand outside and throw stuff at the walls. Yes, seriously, lets see what happens."

"Okay..." Matt agreed, trying not to cough and choke on the smell in the barn. Horse shit stank! Maybe it wasn't all that bad in the grand scheme of things, but to Matt and his enhanced senses it was practically torture. And he had two weeks of this? Ugh! Kill him now!

"You'll get used to it." Kyle promised, trying not to chuckle at the faces the kid was making. "First time Cain made me muck out the stables I barfed. Once you're kinda expecting it it's easier." He took a pair of heavy work boots from the box rapped on the sole with his knuckles. "Kay, dude. Boot hitting the wall on the count of three." He paused, counted back, and then threw the boot - hard- at the wall separating the stall from the neighboring stall.

"Gah!" Matt jumped back, even though he knew the boot was going to go flying like that. He focused on it though, as best he could manage since normally he tried his best NOT to focus on things like that. "The boot hit the wall," uh....how to explain it better? "I could see a sort of shoe-shape and wall. Not all of it."

"Okay, dude, you are officially the weirdest kid I've ever met, and one of my friends used to have mouths on his hands." Kyle picked up the other boot, raised it over his head and then unceremoniously dropped it into the straw, where it made a muffled -whup- noise.

"What as that?" Matt asked, the muffled noise not doing anything he could understand. "And how am I all that weird?" he demanded, annoyed by that. "I didn't ask for this either!"

"That was the other boot landing in the straw." Kyle bent to pick it up. "And man, nobody asks for the weird shit our powers do, but yours... dude, I can't do what you're doing, and I think you might wanna go down and talk to Doc Jean or Doc Hank, but if you're only getting this when you hear something, I think you've got that dolphin or bat thing going on. Like with echoes."

"Oh. I dunno," Matt shrugged, he was just barely getting handle on what he could do and now there was something else?! Ugh. "Maybe..." he didn't like the medlab at all. "I've never done this before. It just sort of...I dunno. Sweeps. Like, right now I can't uh...see...anything. But I did briefly when you threw the shoe. It didn't look like a shoe though, maybe like...a part of one? Did it hit the boards straight on or not?"

Kyle raked his claws through his hair. "Man, we need a better word for that for you. Hey, what happens if you yell. i mean like just yell something, does that do the... sweep thing? And naw, it hit with the heel, 'cause my aim's not great." He sounded a touch sheepish. "I throw bricks. It's so stupid, I can walk on my hands and regrow my fingers and you know, hear like, people breathing from like a hundred feet away but my aim sucks."

Okay, that was sort of amusing, "Um...you want me to yell then?" he asked. That idea seemed interesting. Especially if it was some sort of sonar or echolocation or something like that.

"Yep. Pick something short and, you know, that you can yell with some kinda energy to it." Kyle said, and even his voice sounded like he was grinning. "I mean, if I was you, I'd probably go with something four letters long beginning with f." Nobody was currently close enough to hear it, and Kyle was keeping an ear open. Besides, he wouldn't rat the kid out for that, Matt was already doing two weeks of stinky chores, that was bad enough.

It was not like Matt had never cursed before. Grinning, he faced Kyle, "FUCK!" he yelled as loud as he could, putting some lung into it then almost fell backwards at the response. "Dude! You're freaking tall! I mean, I knew you were, but you REALLY are! And got long hair!" He didn't get a lot of detail, but he could tell that some of Kyle's hair moved, though whether it was from him yelling or something else he wasn't sure.

"Six foot five and yeah, I need to cut it." Kyle's hair was currently past his shoulders, and in dire need of a serious haircut, he just hadn't gotten around to it. "Cause it gets in my mouth and you know what doesn't taste good? My hair. Congrats, you have that dolphin bat sonar thing, only without being all screechy." He could hear bats sometimes, it wasn't a pretty noise. "So now that we've sorted all that out, guess what you get to do?"

Groaning, Matt couldn't help but grin, "Shovel poop. Yeah, yeah. And I guess talk to the docs because I gotta learn to deal with this too. This is too much like math, one thing building to the next."

"And pee. Don't forget the horse pee." Kyle pressed a set of work gloves into Matt's hands, and then handed the young man a pitchfork. "Push it all towards the stall door, and then we'll figure out if I can teach you how to get it in a wheelbarrow."

Taking a deep breath, then gagging, Matt took the gloves and the pitchfork, trying not to grimace. "We'll see," he agreed, wondering if he could feign incompetence at that just to get out of it or if it would really be that difficult that he legitimately couldn't get it. Well, they'd see.