Hank, Nathan, Tuesday morning

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Hank wants to see Nathan's stick.



Hank had missed the grand unveiling yesterday. Not to worry. He'd had a peek at Forge's notes, and he'd been pretty sure that Moira wouldn't actually Nathan take the nice toy to bed with him, so... yes. Surely it must be in the locker. And Hank had mastered getting into these lockers years and years ago.

He opened Nate's locker carefully and... looking around cautiously... reached in to liberate the new toy. Even without Nate to activate it, it looked fascinating... He examined it happily. Nice balance, perfectly shaped blade...

"Henry..." The growl that came from behind him was ever so slightly alarming. "You're playing with my stick."

Hank jumped, spinning around as he clutched the weapon defensively. "I'm just looking at it!" he said a little nervously. "I didn't get a chance to look at it before!"

Nathan raised an eyebrow, more than a little amused by the defensiveness. "You could have asked first."

"But you weren't up yet and I wanted to see now," Hank said plaintively. "Besides, while you have it, I'd have to sedate you to get it away from you."

Nathan reached out a hand, silently, smiling just a bit enigmatically.

Hank sighed, and held out the... psimitar, it had said on Forge's notes. "Next time I'll come down in the middle of the night," he muttered. Really, there was no call to be going around inventing things and not showing them to him. He'd have to have a stern word with young Forge.

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "Well," he said with a perfectly straight face, "I can't demonstrate it unless I'm holding it, now, can I?"

Hank brightened. "Very true. Show me what it does?" he asked hopefully. "I really don't like this 'inventing things without letting Hank see' thing. I'll have to nip it in the bud quickly."

"I've got a Danger Room session on the schedule." He needed badly to blow off some tension; talks were still ongoing between the taskforce and MacInnis, and they probably wouldn't have news until later in the day. "You can sit in the control booth if you want." He walked over to the locker, pulling out his uniform.

"I'd be happy to." Hank grinned a little. "Want me to hold your stick while you change your pants?" he asked brightly. "I promise to be gentle with it."

Nathan glowered at him momentarily, then handed over the psimitar. "No taking it apart," he remonstrated.

"I wouldn't dream of it." Hank chuckled, holding the psimitar carefully. "I can always tickle Forge until he lets me see the blueprints."

Nathan quickly got changed, reclaiming his psimitar almost immediately. He headed into the Danger Room, waiting until he could see Hank in the control booth above. "I'm trying that scenario from January," he said wryly. "The last no-win one."

Hank nodded, frowning a little. "Didn't we all promise Moira that you weren't ever going to do that again?" he asked a little dubiously.

"Completely different situation," Nathan said cheerfully. "Room, begin program," he said, and immediately brought the psimitar around into a guard position, taking a deep breath as the Danger Room came to life around him. He was so going to beat it this time.

Hank winced a little. As an X-Man, he understood the need for training. As a doctor, he really hated watching his patients get shot at. "Would I be wasting my breath if I told you to be careful?

#Not a waste,# Nathan said, and then had no attention for anything but fighting.

It wasn't precisely easy, even with the psimitar. Oh, it was easier to split his attention in more directions, catch the bullets. Launching himself up and over obstacles was less of a strain too, with the psimitar - it gave him something to ground him with, a steady point to push off from. It was going to make gravity-defying telekinetic moves much simpler.

But the scenario was still damned difficult.

Hank winced every time things got too close, but he was quickly absorbed by the action of the psimitar. The Danger Room's monitoring equipment hinted at what was going on insice the thing, and it was just.... fascinating. He definitely needed to take another look at Forge's notes... something that used psi-energy might be able to help Jono, too.

There was that target. Nathan focused on it with all the dogged determination of a guided missile, feeling rather than seeing the obstacles that rose to bar his way, sensing the bullets coming at him. The psimitar seemed to increase the efficiency of his sonar trick exponentially.

Hank sat back to watch. "You know," he said, in a momentary pause. "If nothing else, you could have a great future in stunt-work." Nathan moved like an expensive special effect.... dodging between bullets, leaving the floor whenever he liked...

#Neo hasn't got anything on me,# Nathan sent and then picked up the pace again, still moving for the target. He started to slow down, though, as it became perfectly obvious that the program was still designed to scale upwards in difficulty, and it was doing its almighty best to match him at the moment...

He couldn't afford to get hurt in the Danger Room. Not this week. "End program," Nathan called out with an aggravated sigh, and the computer did. "Damn it."

Hank applauded. "Neo would be chewing on his leather coat in envy," he agreed. "So would I, if I was still doing the warrior-for-peace-and-justice thing. I'm good, but I'm not in your league."

Nathan rolled his shoulders, grumbling a little. "I'll beat this scenario at some point," he said, rather startled by just how good he felt. Oh, he'd worked up a good sweat, but he didn't have the beginnings of the headache he should have had, having run the scenario that hard. Not to mention that he didn't think a single bullet had touched him, and he certainly hadn't run into any of the obstacles.

"I'm starting to think you will." Hank grinned. "And if I had psi powers, I think I'd be fighting you for that thing."

Nathan swung it thoughtfully, feeling the residual charge still in it. "Liking it," he murmured. "Liking it very much. I owe Forge big for this."

"He's a great kid." Hank smiled. "I mean, except for his tendency to think he knows everything, which isa complaint most teenagers suffer from."

"I've never really understood that," Nathan said, and headed out of the Danger Room. Hank joined him in the hall and they headed back towards the locker rooms. "I suppose this is where I concede that I wasn't a normal teenager and the fact that I didn't believe I knew everything was because I was, you know, being used as a brainwashed mutant soldier at the time."

"I did. But then, I knew I was a genius." Hank grinned. "Knowing you're brilliant can be a handicap at that age. It leads to doing stupid things because it doesn't occur to you that you can be stupid, on account of being a genius."

"It would be terribly easy to get cocky when you can reproduce something that a genius had to invent two thousand years from now," Nathan said wryly, glancing down at the psimitar again. "But you know, I really do think he has his priorities in order."

"He does. He and I are planning to do some cybernetics work together." Hank smiled. "IT's practical, publishable, and he can try it out on himself. Just the sort of thing I liked at his age, so I'm hoping he will too."

Nathan looked thoughtfully at Hank. "Looking ahead to beyond this week, huh?" he asked with a faint smile.

"It's a wacky habit I picked up while I was away at school." Hank grinned. "I try to think in terms of the future. I'd like it if we all had one."

"I'm having some difficulties," Nathan confessed, after a moment. They reached the locker room and he put his psimitar away carefully, then started to get out of the uniform.

"I know it isn't always easy, around here. But.. well,for me, it helps. Trying to look beyond the immediate crises to what's going to happen afterwards." Hank shrugged. "It just... makes me feel less trapped by the problems of the present, thinking about 'when this is over'."

"Crises are one thing. What we're planning..." Nathan got the jacket of his uniform off, then paused, shrugging ruefully. "I'll be fine, Hank. It's just taking some processing. I knew this would come... well, I hoped it would come, but this is a little faster than I expected."

"This is a particularly big one." Hank nodded. "But there will be life after it, although I'm sure it's hard for you to imagine right now." He reached over to pat Nathan's shoulder. "It's important, I think, that you believe that. Fatalism can be dangerous,in a situation like this."

"The problem is," Nathan said, "the Askani are fatalists." He gave Hank a deadpan look. "You wouldn't think so, but they are."

"As a doctor, I disapprove of fatalism." Hank sniffed. "Optimism or bust."