Log: Kevin/Quentin: Full Mental Jacket
Mar. 9th, 2023 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsQuentin's week of hanging out with old men continues with another shooting lesson from Kevin that goes into unexpected territory.
Three of the four firearms Kevin had brought to this latest shooting lesson with Quentin lay disassembled on the table before them. The young psychic stood at his side, the fourth gun rotating in the air before them. Quentin snapped his finger and began to telekinetically take it apart, too, deliberately laying each part on the table as it came off. It was a work of art when he was done, like he had styled for a visual guide to gun anatomy.
"I can reassemble them just as fast," Quentin boasted as the parts from the first gun rose from the table to dance in the air.
"Then reassemble it. It's not much good like that." Kevin said from the stool he was sitting against. "Properly cleaned and oiled too. Success is when it fires with clean action once you're done." Oddly, even with the telekinetics involved, the click of the weapon's pieces was soothing to him; a rhythmic white noise that he'd first learned at sixteen and never left being a part of his life. In all honesty, he had assumed Quire wouldn't have lasted more than a couple of sessions, but the young man kept showing up, probably out of sheer spite, and mostly listened to Kevin's advice. About learning to shoot properly. The rest of their conversations tended to be terse and to the point.
"You just told me to . . . ugh, I loathe you so much." But Quentin followed instructions and set to clean each one and put them back together, only grumbling a little bit. Three of them he did simultaneously with telekinesis, but he did one by hand: the double-action revolver, which he had come to favor above the others. His preferred psychic construct, too. Something about the mechanism of cocking the hammer and pulling the trigger appealed to him. Or maybe it was just the use of the word "cock" in the explanation of its mechanism. Either way, once he was finished, he gently placed all four back on the table.
"No point assembling a weapon if it's not going to be ready to fire after." He picked each one up, looking them over with a critical eye. After the last one, he picked up clips from the tray, loading each one except the revolver, which he snapped open and hand loaded six rounds. He took them over in the tray to the range and picked up one after the other, firing two rounds into the target. After he fired and set down the final weapon he nodded and stepped back from the range. "Well done. All properly assembled and sighted. clean action... you'd bring a tear to my old Drill Sergeant's eye."
If Quentin were capable of humility, then he would have felt the same, seeing Kevin fire each one so cleanly and then complimenting him for a job well done. Instead, he just shrugged, like he was being praised for breathing without choking on air. And besides, if he were going to be exalted for anything, it should have been that impressive psychic display. How many other telekinetics could clean and reassemble three guns at the same time? No one except Quentin Quire, that's who. And Kevin didn't even notice.
Setting aside the salt for a minute, Quentin sauntered up next to Kevin and said, "Handguns are fine, but I'd like to try something bigger next. A shotgun or rifle."
"Very different beasts, both of them. Any particular reason? Please say it's not ego." Kevin said, the same thin smirk he often offered the other man.
That earned Kevin a loud snort. "Please, there's plenty of other ways I could prove my manhood to you, but you wouldn't go for them and life's too short to waste time pursuing breeders. No, I just want to know. This whole thing is just a hands-on research project. Now that I understand the differences between a pistol and revolver and how to handle them, I can do this." Pink energy wisped around Quentin's outstretched arms, coalescing into energy constructs of his favored revolver in each hand. "I want to expand my armory."
"So show me." Kevin said, crossing his arms and leaning back. "Let's see what you can do with the revolver."
"Which one, mine or yours? Because I cheat with mine. It's all up here," Quentin said, tapping his temple with the barrel of his psi-gun even as his newly ingrained gun safety lessons scolded him for acting so carelessly in a way he would never do with a real weapon. "I focus my powers and can mostly control where the bullets go."
"You heard me. Why would you ever choose a weapon that wasn't the best one for you?" Kevin said. "Show me what you got, Quire. "
Fine, if that's what he wanted. Quentin shrugged again, dismissing one of the guns, and got into position. Stance as Kevin had taught him and both hands on the grip to maintain his balance and aim, even though the massless psi-gun only recoiled as much as Quentin imagined it would and, as he had told Kevin, he directed the bullets. There was no sound as he fired a dozen rounds from a gun that in reality would only hold half that number of bullets at a time. When he finished, he called the target forward, revealing eleven holes arranged in a heart shape around the center, and a twelfth hole directly through the bullseye.
"Interesting." Kevin said, but with a different tone than normal. "So, the rounds are composed of what? Telekinetic... force, I guess? Do they align with the characteristics of the calibre of that weapon you're manifesting?" Kevin had always been the expert in this room, and now he was peppering Quentin with questions. New experiences came to him rarely at his age and this was certainly something he'd never seen before.
But on pain of death, Quentin would never admit the thrill he felt at finally flapping the unflappable because he had accomplished something so novel and impressive. It almost made him smile. Almost. If there was even a hint of it, he quickly replaced it with an eyeroll and otherwise disinterested expression.
He flipped open the cylinder to show Kevin that all the chambers were still loaded. "It's a combination of telekinesis and telepathy," he explained, "But with my TK, it can't pierce through much. Paper like this target, sure, but it's not gonna injure or kill someone like a real bullet. It's mostly a distraction for the telepathy, which is the real weapon. Focusing it like this makes it easier to penetrate a mind than the normal way. It's violent and damaging but psychically, not physically. I'm only limited by my imagination, which is why I need to expand it. I've got Barton teaching me archery, too, for the hell of it." To demonstrate, the gun faded, and a rudimentary bow appeared in its place.
"Have you tested range yet? Do you have to correct for atmospheric effects at all, or is it almost purely a psionic manifestation?" Kevin barely registered the bow. "Have you tried comparing the action of the revolver manifestation against the automatics yet?"
With a flourish of his hands, Quentin dismissed the bow, too. "No, I don't know, probably yes, and no. What's with all the questions? I'm not a soldier. This is a party trick or an intimidation tactic."
"Is that all it is to you?" Kevin said, the normal mask dropping for once. "You're doing something extraordinary and it doesn't interest you about just what it can mean?"
He paused and stepped back for a moment, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You're channeling your psionic ability through the manifestation of a firearm. If I know anything, I know that function follows form to some extent. I can teach you to use a shotgun. Or a rifle. Or whatever you want, but only if you're willing to see just how this power adapts to the different forms."
"Hmm. Why is this condition so important to you? Aside from getting more chances to be in my company. Which, you could just ask. I probably wouldn't refuse."
"Because you just became interesting to me." Kevin said. "Do I want to know if you can hit a target with a telepathic assault on a sight line at two klicks? Yes, I do. I very much want to."
Quentin rolled his eyes. "There it is. You say 'interesting' but you mean 'useful to me.' And here I was thinking you liked me for me. What do I have to do to touch your heart, Sydney?"
"Of course. You've been a dilettante psion utterly focused on your own pleasure for most of the time I've known you. But now, you've stepped into a leadership role with your band of investigators and can possibly do some remarkable psionic things. Yeah, you're a lot more useful to me than you've ever been." Kevin said simply. "Do you want some pretty lies? Do you need to be bribed? I can do either, but from what I know of you, or at least what I think I know, you claim you want honesty. It's up to you, but right now, I can see an opportunity to work with you and do some real good. If you're not interested in that, tell me now."
"Dilettante?" Quentin gasped dramatically, hand over his heart. "Fuck. That was a read. Fine, I accept your terms. You can teach me and study me, and you can try to recruit me for your little missions when Frost isn't available, and we can do this dance again, and you'll probably get your way because you'll say just the right thing to get under my skin and make me want to prove myself. Sound fair?"
"That sounds fair. But I'll throw in the odd free dinner in places you hate as a gift for things you love but don't want to admit." Kevin said. "So, let's talk shotgun."
Three of the four firearms Kevin had brought to this latest shooting lesson with Quentin lay disassembled on the table before them. The young psychic stood at his side, the fourth gun rotating in the air before them. Quentin snapped his finger and began to telekinetically take it apart, too, deliberately laying each part on the table as it came off. It was a work of art when he was done, like he had styled for a visual guide to gun anatomy.
"I can reassemble them just as fast," Quentin boasted as the parts from the first gun rose from the table to dance in the air.
"Then reassemble it. It's not much good like that." Kevin said from the stool he was sitting against. "Properly cleaned and oiled too. Success is when it fires with clean action once you're done." Oddly, even with the telekinetics involved, the click of the weapon's pieces was soothing to him; a rhythmic white noise that he'd first learned at sixteen and never left being a part of his life. In all honesty, he had assumed Quire wouldn't have lasted more than a couple of sessions, but the young man kept showing up, probably out of sheer spite, and mostly listened to Kevin's advice. About learning to shoot properly. The rest of their conversations tended to be terse and to the point.
"You just told me to . . . ugh, I loathe you so much." But Quentin followed instructions and set to clean each one and put them back together, only grumbling a little bit. Three of them he did simultaneously with telekinesis, but he did one by hand: the double-action revolver, which he had come to favor above the others. His preferred psychic construct, too. Something about the mechanism of cocking the hammer and pulling the trigger appealed to him. Or maybe it was just the use of the word "cock" in the explanation of its mechanism. Either way, once he was finished, he gently placed all four back on the table.
"No point assembling a weapon if it's not going to be ready to fire after." He picked each one up, looking them over with a critical eye. After the last one, he picked up clips from the tray, loading each one except the revolver, which he snapped open and hand loaded six rounds. He took them over in the tray to the range and picked up one after the other, firing two rounds into the target. After he fired and set down the final weapon he nodded and stepped back from the range. "Well done. All properly assembled and sighted. clean action... you'd bring a tear to my old Drill Sergeant's eye."
If Quentin were capable of humility, then he would have felt the same, seeing Kevin fire each one so cleanly and then complimenting him for a job well done. Instead, he just shrugged, like he was being praised for breathing without choking on air. And besides, if he were going to be exalted for anything, it should have been that impressive psychic display. How many other telekinetics could clean and reassemble three guns at the same time? No one except Quentin Quire, that's who. And Kevin didn't even notice.
Setting aside the salt for a minute, Quentin sauntered up next to Kevin and said, "Handguns are fine, but I'd like to try something bigger next. A shotgun or rifle."
"Very different beasts, both of them. Any particular reason? Please say it's not ego." Kevin said, the same thin smirk he often offered the other man.
That earned Kevin a loud snort. "Please, there's plenty of other ways I could prove my manhood to you, but you wouldn't go for them and life's too short to waste time pursuing breeders. No, I just want to know. This whole thing is just a hands-on research project. Now that I understand the differences between a pistol and revolver and how to handle them, I can do this." Pink energy wisped around Quentin's outstretched arms, coalescing into energy constructs of his favored revolver in each hand. "I want to expand my armory."
"So show me." Kevin said, crossing his arms and leaning back. "Let's see what you can do with the revolver."
"Which one, mine or yours? Because I cheat with mine. It's all up here," Quentin said, tapping his temple with the barrel of his psi-gun even as his newly ingrained gun safety lessons scolded him for acting so carelessly in a way he would never do with a real weapon. "I focus my powers and can mostly control where the bullets go."
"You heard me. Why would you ever choose a weapon that wasn't the best one for you?" Kevin said. "Show me what you got, Quire. "
Fine, if that's what he wanted. Quentin shrugged again, dismissing one of the guns, and got into position. Stance as Kevin had taught him and both hands on the grip to maintain his balance and aim, even though the massless psi-gun only recoiled as much as Quentin imagined it would and, as he had told Kevin, he directed the bullets. There was no sound as he fired a dozen rounds from a gun that in reality would only hold half that number of bullets at a time. When he finished, he called the target forward, revealing eleven holes arranged in a heart shape around the center, and a twelfth hole directly through the bullseye.
"Interesting." Kevin said, but with a different tone than normal. "So, the rounds are composed of what? Telekinetic... force, I guess? Do they align with the characteristics of the calibre of that weapon you're manifesting?" Kevin had always been the expert in this room, and now he was peppering Quentin with questions. New experiences came to him rarely at his age and this was certainly something he'd never seen before.
But on pain of death, Quentin would never admit the thrill he felt at finally flapping the unflappable because he had accomplished something so novel and impressive. It almost made him smile. Almost. If there was even a hint of it, he quickly replaced it with an eyeroll and otherwise disinterested expression.
He flipped open the cylinder to show Kevin that all the chambers were still loaded. "It's a combination of telekinesis and telepathy," he explained, "But with my TK, it can't pierce through much. Paper like this target, sure, but it's not gonna injure or kill someone like a real bullet. It's mostly a distraction for the telepathy, which is the real weapon. Focusing it like this makes it easier to penetrate a mind than the normal way. It's violent and damaging but psychically, not physically. I'm only limited by my imagination, which is why I need to expand it. I've got Barton teaching me archery, too, for the hell of it." To demonstrate, the gun faded, and a rudimentary bow appeared in its place.
"Have you tested range yet? Do you have to correct for atmospheric effects at all, or is it almost purely a psionic manifestation?" Kevin barely registered the bow. "Have you tried comparing the action of the revolver manifestation against the automatics yet?"
With a flourish of his hands, Quentin dismissed the bow, too. "No, I don't know, probably yes, and no. What's with all the questions? I'm not a soldier. This is a party trick or an intimidation tactic."
"Is that all it is to you?" Kevin said, the normal mask dropping for once. "You're doing something extraordinary and it doesn't interest you about just what it can mean?"
He paused and stepped back for a moment, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You're channeling your psionic ability through the manifestation of a firearm. If I know anything, I know that function follows form to some extent. I can teach you to use a shotgun. Or a rifle. Or whatever you want, but only if you're willing to see just how this power adapts to the different forms."
"Hmm. Why is this condition so important to you? Aside from getting more chances to be in my company. Which, you could just ask. I probably wouldn't refuse."
"Because you just became interesting to me." Kevin said. "Do I want to know if you can hit a target with a telepathic assault on a sight line at two klicks? Yes, I do. I very much want to."
Quentin rolled his eyes. "There it is. You say 'interesting' but you mean 'useful to me.' And here I was thinking you liked me for me. What do I have to do to touch your heart, Sydney?"
"Of course. You've been a dilettante psion utterly focused on your own pleasure for most of the time I've known you. But now, you've stepped into a leadership role with your band of investigators and can possibly do some remarkable psionic things. Yeah, you're a lot more useful to me than you've ever been." Kevin said simply. "Do you want some pretty lies? Do you need to be bribed? I can do either, but from what I know of you, or at least what I think I know, you claim you want honesty. It's up to you, but right now, I can see an opportunity to work with you and do some real good. If you're not interested in that, tell me now."
"Dilettante?" Quentin gasped dramatically, hand over his heart. "Fuck. That was a read. Fine, I accept your terms. You can teach me and study me, and you can try to recruit me for your little missions when Frost isn't available, and we can do this dance again, and you'll probably get your way because you'll say just the right thing to get under my skin and make me want to prove myself. Sound fair?"
"That sounds fair. But I'll throw in the odd free dinner in places you hate as a gift for things you love but don't want to admit." Kevin said. "So, let's talk shotgun."
