xp_logs | Artie and Scott, Monday Afternoon

Holiday powers training.

With classes over for the summer, the mansion's classrooms were mostly vacant and Artie had taken to holing up in the media room. He'd moved most of the tables to one side and had arranged four of the computers on another near the interactive whiteboard. There was an array of cameras around the room, placed to give a variety of angles of the area in the middle of the room where Artie and two mirror images of himself were performing a bad rendition of Wade's kata. He kept stopping and repeating movements, watching the monitors like a hawk and adjusting one or another of the mirror copies while music blared. It was okay, though: this wasn't about the kata so much as the way his copies were moving.

Scott was hungry, he'd been busy working and had lost track of the time and had clear forgotten to have lunch. He hurried down the corridor hoping that something edible had survived the lunch rush, As he rounded the corner to the media room a wave of sound smashed into his senses. Grimacing he pushed open the door to the room and stopped, "Artie?" he asked as three heads swiveled to face him.

All three faces frowned in concentration. "Hi Scott, what's up?" the one on the left asked, speech bubble floating above its head. Artie concentrated on having it walk over to Scott looking as real as possible while he and other one remained still. Anyway, moving one was so much easier when he was stationary and could watch it.

Scottt stared at the approaching Artie, was it the real one? It was a question Scott couldn't answer until the clone had reached him. Looking past the clone Scott replied to the two stationary versions, "It's a little loud in here isn't it?" he asked before he looked around the room and noticed the furniture. "What are you doing?" Came the inevitable question.

He'd seen the flicker of doubt in Scott's eye before he'd decided which one was real. Artie let the projections vanish, flicked the music off and shrugged. "I'm uh, powers training," he said, letting the speech bubble float over his own head this time even as he pulled out his synthesizer to ease his headache. "How did you figure out which one was me? You weren't sure." How do I make it more real? was the unasked question.

"I couldn't tell until it got close to me," Scott replied. "But your images don't make a sound as they walk, I was listening for footsteps. The music covered it up a bit and made it harder so I had to wait to figure out you weren't walking towards me." He turned a quizzical look on Artie, you're inside power training of such a nice day? He asked secretly impressed by Artie's discipline, although nothing could be seen on his face. "Training for anything in particular?"

"So it was the footsteps? That's good to know. I can't fake that like I can movement," Artie replied, taking a seat. "I saw some old pictures of Jamie. Remember him? I thought that if he can like, be the multiple man, why can't I? And then it was like, a person is about as large as I can do and still keep it looking real, so how real can I get? But movement is hard, so..." He gestured at the cameras with his free hand. "I queued up some movies on Netflix and I'm running them through the IWB the rest of the time, so I can just work on copying how they move and stuff."

I don't want running away to be my only option again. He tossed the synthesizer from one hand to another and continued in a speech bubble. "It's just tricks but when I get more gooder at it, maybe..."

Tricks are important," Scott pointed out, "So much of what we do when we fight is one upmanship. Trying to get any advantage we can over our opponents, even through tricks like this." He gestured at the clones before sitting down himself. "It's a useful tool to have in your repertoire, although I hope you never need to use it."

"Mr Summers, all due respect, we've got a paramilitary strike force camped out in the basement, my powers training teacher is probably some kind of I don't even know what and we just invaded a small country. It's not a case of 'hope you never need it' anymore." Artie sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. "It's more, how much can I learn to protect myself because the rest of you guys have a freaking unfair advantage in that department."

Scott nodded, acknowledging Artie's point, "Fair enough, but if we were doing our job properly then you wouldn't be in the position you are now," he pointed out. "You're 18 Artie, at your age you should be worrying about college and girls. Not thinking about how to defend yourself the next time you get attacked. Besides our advantage comes from years and years of training, don't push yourself too hard worrying about it."

"Well, maybe you should be giving us some of that training, rather than telling me not to work too hard," he replied, typing quickly before adding "And you all walk around with the equivalent of a loaded gun in your hand, all the time. You don't think that counts for something? You want someone to think about girls, go talk to Matt. I've got other stuff on my mind."

"You really want that?" Scott shot back, "You want to deal with the fact that your friends and family are going out there and putting their lives on the line for complete strangers, most of who won't ever know their names or that they were ever there. You want this?" he asked bitterly gesturing to his false eye. "You think that the loaded gun doesn't have a price? We all pay it everyday, and we do it willingly so that you don't have to. Are you so eager to enter this world?"

"I make pretty pictures, Mr Summers. I'm pretty sure that you'd have to let me carry around a taser or start stabbing people if I was going to be an X-Man or I'd probably die. So, no. But I don't know, okay?" He wasn't making sense. Artie knew that but he wasn't sure how to articulate the fact that he wasn't keen on becoming an X-Man if only because he was so utterly outclassed as far as powers went by anyone the team ever dealt with. "I don't have anything outside the mansion. I can't stay here forever so I want to learn everything I can."

"Not everybody needs to have blatantly combative powers," Scott pointed out, "it's more about how you use them than what they can do. You've already proven how useful your powers can be if that's what you want to do." Scott continued completely missing Artie's point. "Nobody would make you join the X-men if you don't want to, or ever make you leave the mansion. You say you don't have anything out there? But you've got everything in here, friends and people who care about you; who want the best for you.

Artie sighed. "I don't want to be on the team and I don't the mansion to be everything I've got since I'm going to leave one day. And I don't want to be a target when I do leave. Can you work on this stuff with me?" Please?

Scott nodded slowly, "Sure, if that's what you want," he agreed. "You want to get back in the middle," he asked gesturing at the spot the clones had occupied, "and I'll see if I can spot the real version without cheating this time."

"All right. Thanks, Mr Summers."