xp_logs | Nathan, Haroun, and Shiro, Proteus aftermath (backdated to December 31st)

Hours after Proteus, Nathan finds Haroun out in the rain. They talk about feeling useless, and skill versus common sense. Then Nathan punches a hole in the castle. (Yes, literally.) He expresses a desire to see the person responsible for Proteus messily dead. Haroun sympathizes, and then flies off to think.

Haroun sat in the most uncomfortable chair he could find, to sit and look out over the waves. Alison was busy with Miles, and Nathan with Moira. He was left all alone with the typically foul Scottish weather and his thoughts. Which were dark, indeed. Jealousy and uselessness were a potent combination, and Haroun was drinking deeply of them - so deeply that he wasn't paying much attention at all to his surroundings. He did, however, let the cyberwear run yet another self-diagnostic, to see if the reality alterations had any lasting impact.

Nathan paused at the open door to the balcony, frowning at the sight of Haroun out in the sleet. He wasn't minding his thoughts particularly well, either, and Nathan's jaw tightened. "Is this some sort of penance?" he asked roughly, coming out onto the balcony. "To see if you can freeze yourself to death out here?"

"I can't freeze to death. Not from this." he said, bringing his internal heat up a notch to counteract the chill from the sleet. "And how's the eyesight coming along?" he asked flatly. "Better, I trust?"

"Playing tricks on me," Nathan said curtly, coming to the railing and then turning to face him. "Peripheral vision is gone again, and my depth perception goes in and out. I figured, when my TK conked out on me during the fight."

Haroun didn't turn to look at Nathan. He let the sleet coat him in water and ice, and then let his heat melt the ice and keep him warm at the same time. "I didn't do well out there yesterday." he said softly. "More of a hazard to everyone else than a benefit. At least I got Angie clear."

"None of us did particularly well," Nathan said. "He was a reality-warper, Haroun." He. Not Kevin.

"Yeah, well, Shiro of all people managed to dance with him quite nicely for a good long while. I managed to smack into the ground in entertaining ways." he groused. "It's a little galling, that some punk kid with no training and a good genome aced me out."

"I am going to tear Shiro a new asshole," Nathan said very calmly. "Extended dance or not. And you weren't the only one who wound up eating dirt, so stop feeling sorry for yourself."

"I'd hold off on that chewing." Haroun said. "For all that it was suicidally stupid, he did well out there. I knew the kid had it in him - I've been working him hard in hand-to-hand for a little while now. Kid's got skill, if I can beat the crap out of him and get him to see with open eyes." he said with a faint smile. "I couldn't touch him." he confessed. "I couldn't keep anyone safe."

"Skill is no substitute for common sense," Nathan snapped. "And here I thought he'd gotten the suicidal idiocy out of his system back in August." His hands clenched into fists at his sides as he wrestled for control. "For all that you tell me how versatile and useful my TK is," he said, a little more steadily, "I didn't manage to do much, either. I don't see the point of kicking yourself, and yes, I realize how ironic it is to hear me say that."

"You also came in too quickly after doing yourself grievous bodily harm" Haroun snapped back at Nathan. "You can't tell me that at the top of your game you wouldn't have smeared that guy all over the island." he growled. "Or, at the worst, used Shiro and Alison for distraction while you took him down. I don't like feeling useless."

"That guy--" Nathan gritted his teeth, turning away to stare out at the water. No putting holes in the castle. No, no, no. "I don't have the patience or the inclination to help you with your self-esteem right now," he growled. "But I do understand the concept of wounded pride, believe me. I'm surprised I have a shred of fucking pride left after all the times this past year that I've come up short, or been unable to do something, or protect someone I care about..." He turned on Haroun, glaring. "I don't have the right to tell you not to wallow in it, because I sure as hell have, but it's fundamentally pointless in the end. Trust me."

"At least you've mastered the notion of offensive uses of your powers. And if you don't mind I'd like to be alone out here. I've got a lot to think about, and I'll shield better so as to not disturb you." he said flatly. "Unless you want to come out here and watch the rain and the sea..."

"I can't afford to sit out here and sulk," Nathan almost hissed at him. "I have to go find a way to hover without being obvious, over my fiancee, given that she had a cloned version of her dead son die in her arms a few hours ago. Some of us don't get the luxury of being self-absorbed right now."

"Then go to her, man! I'll be fine. She needs you more than you need to be up here yelling at me." Haroun said grumpily. "Is that who that was?"

"Yes," Nathan gritted, "that is who that was. And I can not go to her until I calm down a little!"

Okay. So he was going to put a bit of a hole in the castle after all. Nathan stared down at the missing chunk of the stone railing, then blinked at his hand. No damage. All right, he really needed to not unconsciously enhance his punches with TK...

Haroun glanced over at the hole in the railing. "Nice." he said with jealousy. "I'm thinking I may go for a flight, see if it clears my head any. That way, you can calm down without me aggrivating you any more than I already have." He then stood up and unzipped his jacket, letting it fall to the ground.

"It's not you." Nathan breathed out, surprised by just how much of his anger had drained away with that single telekinetic blow. "You don't think I feel the same way right now? Furious, that I couldn't protect the woman I love, who's carrying my child, from something... fuck, it could be her worst nightmare come to life, Haroun." He took another deep breath. "This Essex," he said venomously. "That's who's got to be responsible - she's positive of it." Not that she had talked much just yet, but the thought kept coming down the link.

Haroun nodded. "Nathaniel Essex? Former teacher at the school, responsible for Betsy getting her sight back? That Essex?" he asked, seeking a confirmation. "Let me guess - he's too well-protected and well-connected to just toss a few grenades through his windows and gun him down like a rabid dog?"

"He's a dead man." That came out surprisingly cold. Not that he would have preferred to be ranting and raving, but... "Once I figure out how to do it without risk to Moira or the school. It may take me a while, but this is twice, Haroun. There's no third strike here."

Haroun nodded. "Sounds good to me. Just be careful. If he's that well-protected there may be nothing you can do on your own."

"Oh," Nathan said with a tight smile. "Who said I was planning to do it on my own?" He glanced back out at the water. "Don't go too far," he suggested, the anger mostly gone from his voice. "I don't want to have to send someone to fish you out if the events of the day get to you and you decide to go for a swim."

"I'll be fine." Haroun insisted. "Go see to your wife-to-be." he said, making shooing gestures with his hands. "I'll get over this eventually - post-battle comedown and a bad case of the uselessness is getting to me. A little sky is probably just what the doctor ordered."

Nathan took a deep breath. "You and me," he said, turning back to the door. "More on this later. Don't think I'm kidding, either."

Haroun shed his shirt, standing in the pouring rain and letting it slam into him. "Go see to Moira." he repeated, then let the jackpack unfold so he could take to the air.

Nathan watched him blast off into the sullen sky. "Later," he muttered again, and then went in.

Later, Nathan finds Shiro in the kitchen and does his not-inconsiderable best to tear the young man's head off for ignoring orders out in the thick of the fight. Sunfire is not impressed. Then again, neither is Cable (who is, unfortunately for Shiro, the one driving at this point).

Finally, Leyu had fallen asleep. After such an exciting evening, the little girl was worn out, but had refused to go to bed until her brother physically put her there and sat by her until she had drifted off to dreamland. Satisfied that she wasn't faking and that she wasn't going to wake up any time soon, Shiro quietly got up and left the room. He was starving, and too full of nervous energy to take his own advice, so he figured a trip to the kitchen, hopefully abandoned, would sate him and calm him. The huge place was fully stocked, so Shiro had no problems making himself something filling.

Prowling the halls of the castle restlessly, Nathan felt a familiar set of thoughts and stopped dead, his eyes narrowing. Then he turned around and headed for the kitchen, pushing what Haroun had said out of his mind. It didn't matter if the kid had done well, in the end.

It was only through sheer force of will, and the desire to not have an angry stomach, that Shiro kept himself from scarfing down his sandwich. He took big bites, but forced himself to chew and swallow before taking another. He was half-finished when he heard footsteps approach, and silently began praying that it was not Alison or one of the X-Men, because that could only mean one thing and he didn't want to hear it.

"You and I," Nathan said from the doorway, his voice low and tight, "need to have a talk. Boy."

It wasn't the tone of Nathan's voice that bothered Shiro. It was the final, and in his opinion unnecessary, word that just about set him off. Shiro put his sandwich down and looked Nathan in the eye, refusing to show his annoyance, and (dare he admit it) trepidation, at having a conversation he would much rather skip. "Go on."

"I seem to recall ordering everyone to fall back out there," Nathan said, biting off the end of each word. He was not going to lose his temper here. Tempting a prospect as that was. "Would you care to explain to me why you decided that didn't apply to you?"

Shiro crossed his arms over his chest, standing defiantly. He was not going to let Nathan bully him, despite the differences in size and the fact that Nathan was powerful enough to kill Shiro with a thought. "We would all be dead if I had not stepped in," he responded matter-of-factly.

"Bullshit," Nathan snapped, his eyes like ice as they bored into Shiro. "You give yourself rather a lot of credit for an undisciplined adolescent."

"And not undeserved, either." Shiro kept his voice calm and cool, although anyone with heightened sensitivity could probably tell that the temperature of the room was rising ever so slightly, and that either their eyes were playing tricks on them or Shiro had the faintest golden glow surrounding him. "You have seen what I am capable of. And you know the amount of training I put in to developing my abilities. I am not defenseless."

"What I know," Nathan growled, "is what I see. There is a disconnect somewhere in that head of yours between action and consequence." He drew himself up to his full height, glaring coldly down at the young man. "You nearly killed Scott, Paul and myself the last time. You were lucky this time. What happens next time when you rush into something without thinking?"

"Action: I assist the X-Men battle this monster because I can damage it from far away and not be affected by its powers, unlike most of you," Shiro began explaining, as if to a particularly slow child. "Consequence: the monster is defeated. Auxiliary consequences: one or more of us is injured by the monster, possibly gravely." Shiro refused to allow himself to be intimidated by the man towering well over a foot above him.

Nathan shook his head. "Are you under the impression," he said, almost calmly, "that you have any practical understanding of tactics?"

Shiro held out his left hand. "Reality-warping monster who wants to kill your fiancee." He held out his right hand. "Me." He clapped his hands together. "Blast of solar flare after blast of solar flare." He dropped his hands. "Monster dies. The end."

"Except that's not how it happened, is it?" A child. He was a child. One with a certain level of skill, yes, but just... phenomenally simple-minded. It was almost alarming. Nathan deliberately moved forward, backing Shiro up into the kitchen. "You, trying to be the hero. Thinking you understood the situation. Disobeying a direct fucking order. If you had been an X-Man, Scott would be flying over here to strip the leathers off you personally." His eyes narrowed. "But you're a child who doesn't know any better. Which unfortunately, limits my options as to what I can do to you for thinking that your judgement and experience trumps mine."

If Shiro wasn't afraid of pissing off Moira to destroying her kitchen, not to mention attacking a teacher even if he was invading personal space, Shiro would have released a wave of plasma to get Nathan away from him. But all he could do was narrow his eyes and look more defiant. "I do not care about glory or rewards or being called a hero," he asserted. "I did what I did because I could and because it was the right thing to do. Child or not, I helped defeat that thing before it could tear apart Dr. MacTaggart limb by limb."

"Blind. Dumb. Luck." Nathan loomed over him unrepentantly, using his height and size shamelessly for perhaps the first time with any of the students. Had this been Mistra, there would have been physical contact at this point. Part of him was tempted anyway. "You have a certain level of skill," Nathan said icily, "which saved your ass. But luck and basic skills only go so far. You can get away with ignoring the wider context of the conflict only so many times before your failure to see the forest for the trees kills you and the people around you."

Nathan tilted his head, leaning in even closer. "Or do you see no value in the people fighting by your side?" he asked more sharply, the Askani accent edging his voice as the Clan threw in their weight. "Do you have no trust? No allegiance? Are they subordinates to your will?"

"If you do not back away, sir, I will show you just how far my skill and 'blind dumb luck' go." Granted, a threat coming from someone decades younger and many inches shorter was not very scary, but Shiro could not afford to be anything but. "And who are you to question my allegiance? My honor? A madman who thinks he knows best because he has lived as a weapon, and therefore has a better insight to the world than the rest of us? At the risk of sounding trite, you do not know me, so do not belittle my honor."

"I don't belittle your honor. I belittle your common sense," Nathan said coldly. Not backing away an inch. "Just who the hell do you think you are, Shiro? What do you think you are? You want to know what I see when I look at you? A moderately talented amateur with a frightening level of arrogance. You don't have the experience or the knowledge to make decisions like the one you did out there."

Shiro's aura flared, a last ditch effort to get Nathan away. "What am I? I am ronin. I am the ones the Norns chose to act as Their hand in Asgard. Believe what you want about it, but it is no fairy-tale realm. The gods are real, and they chose me. I am more than an amateur who disobeyed your orders. I am Sunfire, damn it! I am not a child who will be pushed around!"

"You are Shiro," Nathan corrected flatly. "You are seventeen years, think very highly of yourself, and have had just enough training and experience to be dangerous, to yourself and the people around you." The Askani pushed forward and Nathan let them seize control and do something indefinable that resulted in Shiro's aura being snuffed like a candle. "Free piece of advice, kid," Nathan said contemptuously, only then taking a step back, and a leisurely one at that. "The God card? Doesn't wash with me, even when the deities in question are real. And that's even leaving aside the fact that you're not in Asgard anymore." He turned his back on Shiro with a deliberate casualness, striding over to the fridge. "I think I've said all that needs to be said," he informed Shiro over his shoulder, more coolly. "I'll let Scott know that anytime you get caught up in a crisis situation, we need to delegate someone to render you unconscious and remove you to safety, since you can't be trusted to do as you're told."

The sting of Nathan's words did not hurt nearly as much as his powers being canceled out. This was much different than that time had flown past Miles and nearly landed on his face because of the boy's powers. No, this actually hurt, as if someone had reached inside of him and violently shut off his powers. He had to grip the counter to keep his balance, and took a few deep breaths before responding. "What if I had done as you ordered?" he asked, his voice a bit raspy. "What if I had, and Proteus had one less person to deal with, so he could have concentrated more on you and killed you? Or Alison? Or Mr. al Rashid? What if by my not assisting you, Professor Xavier would have to be searching for three replacement faculty?"

"Astonishing," Nathan said in his best, 'my goodness, you do have a brain' voice. "You do have some ability to assess a tactical situation. Try and develop that; you might avoid conversations like this in future." He retrieved a bottle of juice from the fridge - quick sugar hit, yay - and turned back towards the door, pausing to gaze steadily at Shiro. "In the final analysis, you didn't kill yourself or anyone else," he said coolly. "Which is why you're getting the equivalent of a free pass. But trust me, boy, the next time you and I find ourselves facing trouble in each other's vicinity, you're out of the fight as soon as I can manage it. If you can't follow orders, you're not reliable. It's as simple as that."

"And when you get your heart ripped out and leave Dr. MacTaggart and your child alone because you idiotically refused available help, then I will just say 'I told you so.'" It may have been a low blow, but it was just about all Shiro had left in his arsenal.

"I've been a soldier for longer than you've been alive," Nathan said, almost conversationally. "I've seen kids like you come and go, usually in alarmingly messy ways. The cards fell your way this time, yes. I'd tell you not to let that make you cocky, but I think it's a little late for that." He headed for the door, but paused for a moment. "And lay off the powers in the house," he said with a thoroughly unpleasant little smile. "Although I knew you'd go for yours first. Answers a few questions I had about your self-control."

Shiro nearly let him have it right there. "Anything else, ahondara?" he asked through gritted teeth. "Or are you done?"

"For now," Nathan said over his shoulder as he walked out the door. "I think I've made my point. Besides, there are other people who will probably want to have their say. I wouldn't want to steal all their thunder."

"Heaven forbid," Shiro all but spat. "I can hardly wait. Will I be getting brand new lectures, or just recycles of what people told Doug after the blood drive?"

"Petulant too," Nathan commented idly. "Then again, you shouldn't enjoy having your nose rubbed in something. Rather defeats the purpose of making sure you don't do it again."

"It is called sarcasm. Perhaps you've heard of it?" Shiro shook his head. "Forget it. I have had enough, as I am sure you have. Tell those who wish to speak with me that the queue starts at my door."

"They'll see you at their convenience, no doubt," Nathan said. "Whenever and wherever they like. Good night, Shiro."