ArchivedLogs:Practice makes something at least

Practice makes something at least
Dramatis Personae Mariot, Faelan
In Absentia	2014-01-12 Practicing mutant powers and learning life lessons
Location <XS> - Danger Room - B2
"Welcome to the Enterprise", Mariot says as the elevator door opened, her tone dryly amused. "As you know, our destination's that way" - she gestures towards the Danger Room - "though I was thinking that we might do without its fancier options, and just use it as an empty space. Freedom from distractions might be good, so that we can focus on how things feel to you internally." Hefting the small pack slung over one shoulder, the Briton offers an encouraging smile. "There're a couple of things we could try, depending on quite what you want to experiment with today." Looking a little nervous as he looks out the opening elevator door, Faelan shakes his head at the amused tone. "I don't like the name of that room still. You'd think a school would know better." He is wearing clothing warmer than is necessary for indoors, with a few layers as if expecting to be somewhere far colder. "But the open space is probably good. Should I have brought anything to practice with? I don't really come down here so," he pauses shaking his head, though he tries to smile back at the encouraging smile. "Whatever you think is best. I dressed in case I end up outside, but when I had done teleportation lessons with Professor Wagner, he had me doing objects instead. Less chance of anyone ending up somewhere unfortunate." Mariot chuckles. "I suspect that the name was quite deliberately intended to persuade pupils taken into it that it was *not* a toy or a game." She pauses a moment to open up the room, before gesturing an invitation for Faelan to precede her inside. "Well... there are a few things we could try with objects, but dressing in case you wind up outside is only sensible. An obvious option I can offer is for you to work against resistance, so that we can try to help you to get a better feel for exactly *how* your talents work. But since we don't know quite how your ability might react to that kind of stress... I'm glad you're dressed warmly." "I don't know. I can name some students who would be more likely to come here the more dangerous sounding the name room." Faelan shakes his head again at that, and watches Mariot open up the room. "Whatever you think is best. At least invisibility is pretty safe, the only thing dangerous that happens to me with that is tripping over something then." As she talks about her resistance, he seems to think, then shrugs. "Its worth a shot? I don't really know how your capabilities work either. Like I mean, is it just You who is safe, or like if it protects your shoes too for example." He does however let out an accepting sigh at the thought he'd probably end up cold though. "I already put my phone in a water proof baggy in my survival kit at least. Ending up in the water in this cold would be even worse," he pats his stomach indicating where he had the kit stached. Mention of winding up in water in *this* weather draws a wince and a sympathetic look from Mariot. "I've no intention of pushing you into that... but it's best to be prepared, as I'm sure you know all too well by now. But... that question actually links to an option for training *me*, as well as you," she admits with a smile. "By default, it extends to any discrete object I touch. I'm not warding "the school" or even "this room", but all my clothes, my bag, anything I pick up or take direct hold of.... Though it does tend to default to the smallest identifiable object: so if I'm opening a door, the handle will be much better-protected than the rest of the door." "People are more awkward... but I can extend full protection to someone I'm touching - either directly, or through clothing. It's a little taxing, and the more people I have to protect the harder it becomes... but a theoretical possibility would be that I could try to block you from using your power on yourself. Or hinder it, at least, and help you learn more about exactly how it works. But that would be experimental on *both* our parts, so it's not what I was going to try first." "For that, I was thinking of having you try to turn invisible something I'm holding. I can try to reduce the protection I extend to it, and give you variable levels of resistance to work against - including none at all, to start with." "Hrm, well I'm open to trying it out. Normally I just look at something in range and I can just well, think it to go away or be out of my sight. Professor Wagner had me slow down, think it out first and try to visualize the thing and where I want it before doing so, but I only really was able to do that successfully once. And that might have just been more luck than having control over it." Faelan nods as he looks around the room he visits so seldomly. "What if I make something invisible, and then you give it resistance? Would it make it visible then? Or do you only prevent," he thinks a moment for the right word "targeting I guess? Like in video games where you target lock a missle and it flies off and hits it on its own. So it stops the lock from happening?" Mariot cracks a grin. "*That* depends on precisely how your ability operates, I suspect.... As you might imagine, I've served as a diagnostic aid, in the past. If there's a continuous... connection between you and whatever you affect, I'll disrupt it. If you infuse something with a 'charge', over which you then have no control at all, then things will be rather more up in the air. If it's somewhere in between the two, then we might get into a struggle over whose ability wins out..." She shrugs amiably, before swinging the pack off her shoulder, delving inside, and producing a large, squishy juggling ball. "I'm not suppressing my ability at the moment - can you form any kind of connection to this?" "Well, I lose things I make invisible all the time. If I was connected wouldn't I be able to make it visible again without having to touch it?" Accepting the squishy ball from Mariot, Faelan glances at it and it becomes invisible, showing his palm just fine beneath it. "But if I am connected to it, your power might make it visible again. And if I'm not, it might not?" Handing back the invisible thing carefully, he waits for it to be taken before releasing it. "They've done amount testing on me, like I can do about a dozen separate things before I can't do any more. So I guess we'll see?" He doesn't seem very confident anyway as he waits for her to do whatever it is to the invisiball. "Heh." Mariot grins as she looks at her apparently-empty palm... though her hand cups the curl of the ball. "It's always interesting, coming up against something that doesn't simply disappear on contact with me. I could quite possibly use this sort of thing to try to boost my ability to actively suppress things.... Does this wear off over time, burning through whatever charge you've put into it? And... feel free to touch it, and see if you can 'find' that charge to withdraw it while it's in contact with me." "Yeah, things come back to being visible eventually. If it was really big its minutes, but something that size takes about a day. Which is useful for making snares and stuff to catch food. Don't really have to camoflage something that it can't see anyway." Faelan watches her and her empty palm, wishing he could see it himself. "And um, I can try and revert it. Would reverting it be targeting? Or like gah, I don't think I have the education for this. I don't know how many people technically do." He looks even less confident as he reaches his hand out to her hand and the ball that is probably still in it. "I'd *presume* that your power has to find the charge to reclaim it - otherwise there'd be an on-going connection," Mariot muses. The ball is indeed still in her hand, however transparent it might presently be. "And invisible snares? I'm impressed. I'd wondered about offering you a bit of survival training, but it sounds as if you're rather ahead of me already." "They prioritized the survival training after the third time I ended up in the woods. I could probably last awhile on my own, unless it was too hazardous of a terrain. I mean nobody can survive antarctica for long. Except maybe Professor Logan. I don't think anything could take him down." Faelan places his tongue between his lips in concentration as he touches the invisiball and attempts to recover the energy. "I could imagine him winding up frozen into an iceberg," Marion answers with a laugh. The ball... is physically there, but seems no longer to exist at all, as far as Faelan's power is concerned. "Mmmm. I can feel that you're pushing against my ability. We could struggle over it... but it's probably more productive for me to try to scale it back, and see when you can open a connection with it. *Hopefully*, you'll be able to feel things change." "Yeah, but the minute it warmed up he'd be up and kicking wouldn't he?" Faelan pokes at the ball, not used to it just not clicking back. "We can try that if you want? It would be useful if I could actually manage to sense the thing without seeing it. Then I wouldn't just have to wait till it came back on its own. Oh man, wouldn't it be awesome if I could just teleport it back to me? Then I wouldn't lose anything, just ta da, return" Mariot laughs, then grins. "Now that's an interesting idea... Mmmm. Let's see. I normally just have this 'off' or 'on', so to speak, but..." Frowning a touch, she sets about gradually reducing the protection provided to the currently-invisible ball. "Hopefully, this'll help you to identify quite when and how your ability rediscovers the charge," she murmurs. "I don't even know if thats possible. I mean I can't teleport something I can't see, well aside from me. I think I'd be happy just figuring out if I could find something again without just rummaging my hands over it." Faelan nods as he keeps his hand touching it. "Wait, should I be touching it if I'm trying to sense it? I mean I can feel the ball already, it just isn't recalling the power yet." "I'd say to keep touching it for this try," Mariot suggests. "See if you can feel when - or if - your ability finds it again. Try to distinguish that from touch. But we can do it both ways, easily enough. And also let you try pushing past a bit of resistance from me, to force it into invisibility in the first place. Try to give you as many ways as we can of feeling the details of exactly what your talent does." "Alright I'll keep touching it then." Faelan watches it concentrating. "Well I kinda feel a little something? Or my brain is rebelling against how silly this seems." He smiles a little at that though he still seems to be concentrating. "Normally it just comes back all at once, would not being able to lock on make it slower? Or grr, theres just no real words to express it right. I can try to pull it back I guess?" "If it's right on the cusp," Mariot says, sounding somewhat distracted by her own degree of concentration, "then people can find their connection... flickering. Coming and going. So it might work slower, yes. You might remove a bit of charge, then lose the link, then regain it. Fortunately, it seems that your ability doesn't respond badly to being challenged like this. You're not randomly turning other things invisible, or the like." "Well normally everything I do is just instantaneous. I don't think about it and it just happens." Faelan bites his lip and mentally yanks at the invisibility. Something definitely seems to happen though as first the invisibility goes hazy and snaps back. "Almost got it...." closing his eyes he mentally yanks again, first snapping the field into blackness, another yank making the field show a hole through to the other side of her hand. It finally seems to leak away into Faelan's fingertips revealing the ball. Opening his eyes, he looks to Mariot and smiles. "I did it" Mariot grins broadly, clearly delighted. "I think that worked wonderfully", she says happily. "Especially if you could feel the changes in the connection. I could see things changing, there. How did it feel to you?" "It just was harder to absorb. Felt like I was trying to grab something covered in oil? Like I grab it, and then it wasn't grabbed anymore?" Faelan shakes his head at that, looking to the ball. "Not quite really like that. But its hard to explain it. I mean, it was all in my head not really grabbing it." He frowns wiggling his fingers. "Why aren't there terms for this already? There wasn't exactly a Mutant Sciences 101." Offering a rueful chuckle, Mariot nods. "I spent time with the woman who invented much of this, as a field of research... and even with her, it often felt like we could be making things up as we went along. And since things are so..." She pauses, free hand gesturing vaguely as she searches for the right word, "so intimate for people, terms that make perfect sense to one group of people might simply not feel right to others." Sighing Faelan nods. "I know. I don't teleport the same way as Professor Wagner. And I don't turn invisible like the," he seems to be gesturing for a word. "Lumokinetic? Photokinesis? Bah, so much of this stuff is made up Greek slash Latin combinations. Its frustrating either way, but I guess it was worse for you. Like how would you even know you had mutant powers until some other mutant just failed against you?" He pauses looking to her. "Who was it? I mean, was it like a bad guy? Or did Professor Xavier find you by accident when he was looking for other mutants? I mean, he found me, and I owe him everything. But I don't really know much more about him than that. You don't really get teachers telling you their life stories." Mariot musters a smile, though it's slightly wan. "The Professor is very, very keen that we avoid any impression of training students to serve as active participants in violent conflict," she says softly. "But some of the X-gene teaching staff came to notice because of our involvement in violent situations - or have abilities that could be great use in perpetrating violence." "Myself... I was in the British Army. I was on active service, when there was an attack on our base. I was interviewing civilians - witnesses to a prior attack - when we had one of those infamous 'blue on blue' incidents: Afghan police abruptly collaborated with attackers, obeying orders shouted by one of them. I could understand them - I'm proficient in Dari - but I felt something happen, sort of... twisting them away from being something I had to obey. And... the witnesses, I kept my hands on them as I tried to get them out. They weren't affected, either." "So..." She sighs, shrugging ruefully. "I was wounded in the crossfire, which gave me a chance to have a bit of a melt-down while already consigned to a hospital bed, and after that... I received an invitation to go to Muir Island. And you don't say no to a Nobel Prize-Winner who says she might be able to help you understand what's happened." "I have no intention of participating in violent conflicts." Faelan shakes his head and shudders. "I know most of our powers come out in stressful situations. If I wasn't being bullied, I might have had ya know, some better control over teleporting. But getting shot is probably worse than fists and pitchforks and torches." Looking at his hands, he clenches them. "They'd probably call me a dangerous terrorist though if I have to get registered. But well, it at least worked out for us? I mean you got to work with Nobel prize winners. And, well theres all this?" "I felt that I was doing some good before," Mariot says, accompanying her words with a gentle smile. "Now... I have the chance to be part of something different, certainly. But I think it has the potential to be more important than what I was doing before. I'm never likely to be a renowned heroine, visibly saving the day... but I can do things like talk to people infected by a mutant-generated memetic virus, without significant concern of becoming a vector for the disease. I can meet telepaths without - much - worry over having my own or other people's secrets lifted from my head. I'm of clear use to anyone with an interest in mutant affairs, even without any of my... mundanely-acquired skills being considered. That took some getting used to, I admit." "I don't think I'd ever be a hero either. I don't exactly have the bravery for it. And well, the last time I tried to help someone being eaten by a zombie, I get yelled at and pushed down." Faelan frowns and sighs. "I'm just the best coward around. Nobody can stop me from running away and hiding. Not exactly capes and masks materials there." Shrugging he looks about the mostly empty room. "But I want to learn to control what I have anyway. Who knows, maybe some day what people actually need is a coward instead of a hero." "Heroism's not a matter of being fearless. If you're not scared of something, it's easy to attempt it," Mariot responds, her tone gentle. "It's overcoming your fears that is impressive. And... your instinct was to help, in the face of obvious danger. I'd say that you've got the makings of what it takes - not least because you don't want to fight, and you're not seeking glory." "And...." She hefts the juggling ball. "Wanting to learn more, that's a rather good thing, too. Thinking that you've already mastered your talent is probably unwise, whoever you are. I wouldn't be surprised if the Professor felt that he was still learning." "Thats what the Disney movies say anyway. I'm still working my way up to not teleporting when I fall down the stairs, but at least I don't go nearly as far away when that happens now." Faelan bites the side of his lip and puffs out a breath of frustration. "Everyone else just wanted to attack the zombie, which is, ya know. I just didn't want hir getting hurt worse and she was already sick. And then we ended up in New Jersey." He nods at wanting to learn more though. "I think I need a lot more learning than everyone else. Even with all the lessons I've had already, maybe I'm just defective and I can't do it right? Maybe I'm a broken teleporter. Theres probably some record somewhere about defective mutants and I'm top of the list." Mariot laughs, shaking her head. "Definitely not. You get a great deal right. Have you ever teleported anyone into the middle of a hill? Or half in and half out of a building, or a vehicle? Ever found yourself hopelessly far above the ground, or half a mile underwater? There do seem to be... safety parameters built into a great many mutations, but there are all too many reported cases of people either hurting others while wholly out of control, or deliberately pushing their limits until things go haywire...." "And by your standards... aren't I defective? Shouldn't I be able to annul powers, not just slip myself out from beneath them? Shouldn't I be able to affect a wider range of abilities? How about at least identifying who has bounced off my defences? Or getting my defences to the point where the Danger Room can't punch through them?" Cautiously, giving Faelan plenty of opportunity to dodge or indicate aversion, she reaches out to rest a hand on his shoulder. "You're still learning. Pretty much everyone you ever meet will still be learning how to use their talents. What you're aspiring to... well, it's the equivalent of being an elite sportsman. That's supposed to take ten thousand hours of training to achieve, in most cases. We don't really know how rapidly people can be expected to develop their fine control, or to learn new uses for their X-gene talents... but don't feel bad about not having mastered it yet. After all, if you had, what possible use would I be?" "Maybe my power is just lazy? I mean I don't have the pop of air that Professor Wagner does when he teleports in. So, that means I'm not displacing any air when I go in or out, which has to mean something. Probably teleporting into something is harder?" Faelan nods, then frowns. "You aren't defective. I mean, its not like there is anyone else who can even do what you do, so," he looks at her. "Oh, that was one of those learning things about comparing myself to others wasn't it?" Sighing, he runs a hand through his hair, then holds stock still as she touches him but relaxes. "You don't have anyone who is better at what you can do than you. Other teleporters are better. Being invisible and doing other things as well. I should just focus on what I can do, and how to be better at it than worry about what others can do and I can't." "Actually, I've run into at least one person who seemed to put me into a category," Mariot says with a wry smile. "I was immediately identified as "a nullifier". I would be very surprised if my ability were unique, save perhaps in the detailed specifics. The... key, for both of us, is probably to learn precisely what those specific details are... and how we can best make use of them, while minimising their weaknesses. Teleportation with an audible effect, after all, surely indicates that one is not precisely replacing what is already there - there's a clear displacement effect, as you say. Your talent, however, appears to opeate with real finesse. It equalises pressure... which I would presume is not exactly an entirely straightforward process." "Well its not like science fiction didn't invent terms for stuff ahead of time. I mean teleportation? More of the latin er, greek maybe?" Faelan gives a small smile at that. "I mean they could have said something sillier instead, and still gives the impression they knew what you could do. Its just a lot less obvious to see what you can do." Making a face at the displacement and pressure equalization he scratches his head. "Wouldn't all that pressure equalization be harder? I mean it would have to create stuff when it wasn't there, or remove stuff if it was there. I remember that much at least from science classes. What if it just swaps it? I kinda remember smelling chinese food when I teleported Ivan, and thats not exactly a smell that comes up in the middle of the forest." "I'd presume you swapped it, yes," Mariot agrees. "But... hrmm. It might be something to experiment with. Put a little coloured smoke into air, and test how it behaves when you teleport," she muses. "See if you match air-speed and density, or perform a direct swap. Either way, the comment about finesse stands: I can certainly imagine situations in which a lack of an audible cue would be of immense use. On the 'nullifier' thing: it was an instant response. No 'how did you do that', or presumptions that I was a master of their own talent - instead, straight to a presumption that I could nullify other people's talents. Perhaps just a fluke, but..." The teacher shrugs slightly. "I try not to be too paranoid, I admit. But it's hard not to be at least a little wary." "Maybe sometime warmer when ending up outside isn't such a likelyhood. Or maybe teleport something with a camera and a gps." Faelan nods abit thinking on the matter. "But I am not one to say don't ere on the side of caution. If they seemed to induce paranoia, I'd say bail." He smiles at that, looking around the danger room. "Like a room called Danger." Cracking a grin, Mariot nods. "I think that it could be a good line of enquiry to test, that. Especially with recording gear: finding out what it picks up could be fascinating. But for the time being, we can focus on trying to test how things feel with my resistance. We've still got a few iterations to test there, if you want to get back to trying to make a ball disappear." "Makes sense. Invisibility is much safer to do the testing on. And thank you for the help." Faelan looks to the ball, then back to her with a smile. "And even if I didn't need help with powers, you do help put things into perspective. Advisors give advice after all." The smile is a little warmer at that, then he points to the ball. "So back to breaking the laws of physics and logic then I guess?"