ArchivedLogs:Borrowing Fire

Borrowing Fire
Dramatis Personae Matt, Tian-shin
In Absentia	2016-05-07 "Let's...drill that a bit more, shall we?"
Location <XS> Danger Room - B2
The room is large and circular, a geodesic hemisphere of hexagonal ceramic panels. Though in use, it looks more or less just as it does when lying idle save for a single square table sitting in the middle and two matching chairs. Upon the table is a beaker of water under a heavy glass bell jar. Just this, and nothing more. Matt is not sitting, but he leans heavily on the back of one chair. He's not in his uniform, just a heather gray Xavier's athletic tee and navy jogging pants with white stripes down the side. His green eyes are fixed on the beaker, and he chews on his lower lip with a visible effort of concentration. "Wait, wait, I think I've got it..." Fine bubbles start forming against the inside of the beaker, merging into larger and larger ones until they start rising to the surface of the water. Tian-shin stands across the table from him--also not in uniform, though her training clothes are somewhat more colorful: a cap-sleeve shirt covered with stylized pink cherry blossoms, stretchy black capris with bright green vines along the outseams, and bright rainbow spectrum sneakers. Her hair is coiled into a tight bun at the back of her head, and her fading makeup does not quite conceal the dark shadows under her eyes. She watches Matt rather than the water, but smiles when the bubbles start forming. "Excellent! Now, focus on the air inside the bell jar. It should feel different than it did before. That's the extra hydrogen and oxygen from the reaction." Matt nods slowly, not takeing his eyes off of his work. His powers, which have been twined with Tian-shin's, monitoring and manipulating the glass of water. At his teammate's prompting, he shifts his focus now to the air above the beaker. Several seconds later, his eyes narrow. "It /does/ feel different, but it's a very /subtle/ difference. I'm not sure it's enough for me to...grab a hold of." Tian-shin clasps her hands together primly in front of her. "It's subtle--would be even subtler without the glass there to keep it contained." She draws a deep breath and pushes it back out. "But you don't really need to grab hold of it to do the next part. You just..." She closes her eyes, and lifts one hand, palm up and fingers half-curled. A faint shift in her powers pull apart the water molecules in the air into hydrogen and oxygen much as Matt had done inside the belljar, followed immediately by a quick inernal flick. A puff of flame blossoms between the tips of her poised fingers, dying out a fraction of a second later. Matt's eyes slide up to watch Tian-shin's hand, and his attention is sensible to her as a tightening of his powers around hers. He smiles faintly at the flame. "It's so beautiful," he murmurs. "I don't mean just the fire, though..." He trails off and doesn't pick it back up. Instead, he returns his focus to the air inside the bell jar, his powers tightening for a moment around Tian-shin's and replicating the flick. Nothing happens. He frowns. "I thought I did the exact same thing you did. What went wrong?" Tian-shin tilts her head just a fraction. "Honestly? I'm not sure." She studies the bell jar intently with her powers, but her eyes are on Matt now. "I felt it, and it seemed mostly right, except..." She looks down, chewing on the inside of one cheek pensively. "I don't know how to put this into other words, but it had no ki-ai. You need.../follow-through./ Like so." A flame bursts into life above her hand once again. Matt stands up a little straighter, stretching his shoulder in a slow roll. He closes his eyes before Tian-shin's demonstration, shutting out the visual spectacle in favor of concentrating on experiencing it through his powers. Through /her/ powers, going through the motion right along with her. He nods again, licking his lips. This time when he tugs Tian-shin's powers into the proper configuration, it's more willful, more determined. More /fiery./ The flame roars to life, briefly filling the inside of the glass dome and rattling it agains the table. Matt sucks in a quick breath and leans back, eyes wide. "Oh!" His hand comes up to touch his cheek. "Oh, my." Tian-shin's eyes also go a bit wide when the fireball bursts out inside the bell jar. She instinctivey attempts to quell the reaction, but cannot fight Matt's control of her powers. Her shoulders tense hard, but then relax again once the flame abates. "Wow," she manages, after a few seconds. The smile she offers her teammate is a little nervous. "Well--well done. Let's...drill that a bit more, shall we?"