Jean-Paul. (du_nord) wrote in academy_x, @ 2010-05-07 20:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | colossus, northstar |
Who: Jean-Paul and Piotr.
When: Friday, 7 May, just before dinner.
Where: School grounds.
What: JP's been laying low since prom and avoiding the fallout of the Remy incident, but he's got some pent-up frustration to get out. Therefore, playing with his concussive booms sounds like a good idea.
It was very good that this school was set on so much land. Jean-Paul had been over every inch of it, often preferring time spent running or training outdoors than staying indoors with the Americans he often barely understood. He'd known for a long time that he wasn't a normal teenager -- his powers made sure of that, even if his history had been totally normal -- but he had hoped that it wouldn't be so difficult to fit in at a school that was solely for young people who were different. No one had really been hostile, and he'd certainly been welcomed, but he still felt as though he didn't understand the references the other students made, the music they liked, the jokes that made them laugh. Maybe it was that he wasn't American, maybe it was that he'd been an international athlete at an age when most of his peers were only worried about pimples and failed tests, maybe it was that he had just been far too alone for far too long to really get along well with most people anymore. Whatever the reason, he simply wasn't one of them.
The incident at the prom had only cemented that feeling. It had been reckless to kiss Remy, certainly, and it wasn't anything he would have done (or could have done) if he were back home. There, he wasn't allowed to so much as smile at a young man in public -- Raymonde's orders. He understood the reasoning behind it. As it stood, he was an athlete first, a political agitator second; if he allowed anyone to prove that he was homosexual or even state it with some authority, he would become a gay athlete first and a gay political agitator second, and while he wasn't against coming out publicly at some point, he wanted to control when and how that happened. He wanted to be known and celebrated for his achievements first -- not for something he couldn't control.
He hadn't had time to date in his former life, anyway, and it was only since coming here and trying to adjust to a schedule with much more free time than he was used to that he'd even thought it was possible. And... well, if he was being honest, it probably wasn't really possible. There had been Remy -- he was definitely sure he hadn't imagined the Acadian flirting with him, so that mess at prom hadn't really been his fault, even if the young man was as straight as he claimed. There was Bobby -- he was far too adorable and far too obviously straight and really far too clueless, so that wasn't going to work out, no matter how badly he was crushing on the kid. There was the cute boy in his economics class at university, but it would be far too difficult to carry on a real relationship with a human while focusing on his mutant training without putting the entire school at risk of exposure, so that was hardly viable at the moment. He was sure that he was doomed to be romantically frustrated in this place, and by the same token, doomed to be an outsider. Or at least until he learned more about how these Americans thought, so that he could interact with them on their level.
He was out here with a basket of tennis balls he'd purchased in town, having had an idea that working on controlling those concussive blasts would help at least get his mind in order. He'd been working on using them in power training in the weeks since the attack -- very cautiously, of course, because as of now he had no idea exactly what his potential was in this area, and the teachers had advised him to practice creating the blasts with small amounts of power in order to control their effects, rather than just shoving everything he had into them and hoping for the best. So this afternoon, JP was trying to make small, localized blasts, and trying to aim them. Thus, tennis balls. He would throw one up as high as he could, and then hit it with a blast while it was still high enough not to cause any damage to him or his surroundings; JP's reflexes were good enough that it really wasn't difficult to anticipate where the ball would be, and he'd already made one direct hit which had destroyed the ball entirely, and one glancing one which had just knocked the ball out of its path and sent it spinning away.
He'd been right in this, at least -- practicing with this new power did make him feel better about himself, and he was quietly satisfied with the results of this experiment as he sent another tennis ball high into the air and tracked its movement with one arm, waiting until it was at the peak of the parabola before pushing out with his power, just as he'd done before. Jean-Paul grinned, rare for him, knowing even before it happened that it was a perfect hit. The ball exploded, bits of rubber and felt flying every which way, and JP did a little fist-pump, pushing himself into the air to hover for a moment in celebration.