Cyclops was right and he wishes he wasn't (cyclopswasright) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-08-08 12:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, lorna dane (polaris), scott summers (cyclops) |
I’m still worried that when stuff gets bad again I’ll be useless again.
Who: Lorna and Scott
What: Training, talking
When: August 2nd
Where: Scott’s place
Status: Complete
Rating: PG
Lorna wasn’t sure these training sessions were doing much to make her more proactive. She didn’t think being a fighter was in her nature. Dream her had issues with it sometimes, but she had motivation to fight, and lots of anger. Lorna didn’t want to be so angry, but she didn’t want to be useless in the next big fight, either.
So she showed up at Scott’s place again, wearing her yoga pants and tank top, looking and feeling awkward and silly. She hoped Emma wasn’t the one who answered the door, again. Lorna always felt short and ugly compared to Scott’s wife.
Scott opened the door, and smiled at Lorna. He was still a little sore from last night’s escapes, but he wasn’t above some training to work out some left over energy. “Good choice. We’re going to get sweaty.”
Lorna couldn’t help but giggle at that. She liked that he could smile so much here. “I guess it’s a good thing we’re starting before it really gets hot, then.” She stepped inside, rubbing the wrist of one arm with its opposite hand. “So what’s first for today?”
“Lets go into the backyard.” He nodded his head and let her in, leading her through the house to the back yard. He’d set up targets, assorted metal objects and other things. He had some ideas to focus on her finesse - and ideas to see if they could use each others’ powers.
Lorna trooped through the house, giggling when she saw the targets. “Alright, what’s the plan?”
Scott smiled. “Precision. See what you can lift and mold. What if you could twist a piece of metal that I can bank my beams off of?”
Lorna nodded. “Makes sense.” She stretched her neck and hands a little. It wasn’t necessary, but it helped with her urge to fidget.
He pointed at a beam. “Hit that one, make it into a pretzel, try to put it through that other target.”
Lorna nodded, and did as she was told. It didn’t take much effort. She was used to bending things back into shape, by now.
He nodded approvingly, then pointed at a large metal plate. “Make that into something that can redirect an energy beam. Curved or angled, then lift it twenty meters off the ground.”
“Crap, metric system.” Lorna grumbled. “What do you want your beams to hit?”
“The target down range,” Scott replied, and pointed.
Lorna nodded and the piece of metal shot up into the sky, angled so that Scott could (hopefully) hit the desired target. She even made the metal reflective, with the idea that he’d be able to correct her angle if needed.
Scott fired his beam and it angled off of the metal, striking the target dead center. He gave her a grin. “Perfect!”
Well, that was lucky. Lorna laughed a little. “I didn’t expect that to work.” This was all fine and fun. She could bend and hover things all day.
“Ever thought about making industrial art?” Scott asked, before directing her to angle the metal in a different direction.
“I’ve done all kinds of stuff.” Lorna noted. “I take crochet commissions, I make stitch markers. I’ve been thinking about doing drop spindles for spinning, but that would mean I’d have to know anything about that hobby.” It looked easy, but Lorna knew that crafts looked easy to seduce wayward crafters.
“What I meant is taking scrap metal and turning it into sculptures.” It was a natural extension to her powers and one that wasn’t destructive at all.
“Yeah, but for what? To sell to the same people I make blankets and doilies for?” She shrugged. “I’ve been having more fun crocheting little circuits for lights into things. I have a little snowman I made with LEDs for buttons and eyes.”
“Just a suggestion.” Scott shrugged his shoulder. He wished there was more mundane uses for his powers.
Lorna laughed a little. “Sorry, you’re right. It would be a good use for what I can do. I just don’t see the world that way. Like, a bunch of scrap metal is just scrap metal to me.” Well, except when she took hallucinogens, but a hobby that made her do that more was not a great hobby to take up. “I keep thinking maybe I could do something with computers, but I don’t know what, exactly. I don’t know enough about how they run and if I focus on them too much I tend to. . . you know, destroy them.” She laughed a little. “Hey, I want to try something of my own, but it’s not going to work here. I’ve been thinking that I might be able to disrupt your powers, so they stop at a certain point, instead of going on until they hit something.”
“We can try that.” It would be a good exercise. Scott was willing to try it. He didn’t say anything more about the art - if Lorna didn’t see it that way, there was nothing more about it.
“Do you know of some place a little less suburban we could try it? I don’t want to mess up and demolish one of your neighbor’s houses.” She didn’t think he wanted that, either.
"The ranch," Scott decides. It was practically set up for that.
“Oh! Good idea!” Lorna said with a laugh. “I’m supposed to go there right after this, I could make us both breakfast and we could go together, if you want. I’ve got my work clothes in my backpack.”
“Sounds perfect.” Scott gave her a grin. “Lets see how far we can push it.”
She nodded and bounced into the house again. “Your kitchen is amazing. It’s a shame you can’t cook.” She made a beeline for the fridge and took stock. “How’s an omelet sound?” She’d made one for Alex that morning, but she didn’t like to eat a bunch of food and then go work out. Normally these sessions lasted a little longer.
“Omelet sounds fantastic.” Scott nodded and fell into step beside Lorna. “Then we’ll see what you can do.”
She laughed and gently shoved Scott toward the table. “I can’t cook with you hovering over me.” She grinned at him then began pulling out ingredients. “I’m still worried that when stuff gets bad again I’ll be useless again. I can do all kinds of tricks but I can’t hurt things.”
“Not hurting things isn’t something to complain about Lorna. You don’t have to fight if you don’t want to.” Scott took a seat, and rested his elbows on the table.
“I could have done more. I could have helped Jean with the spaceship, I could have gone to Vegas and helped keep more people safe. I had to be saved by Alex when we were attacked. If he hadn’t been prepared, or I’d been alone, I don’t know what would have happened.” She cracked the eggs, her expression serious. She was frustrated with herself for failing to protect her husband and the innocent kids at the Ranch. It had all worked out in the end, but that was no thanks to her.
“Not everyone is a fighter.” Scott tapped his fingers on the table. “You have powers, but you can create, not destroy. God knows I don’t want to hurt people if I can help it.”
“But I want to be able to do it if there’s no other option.” She started to sautee the leftover vegetables. “I don’t want to be the most powerful innocent bystander when you guys are out there nobly sacrificing your lives for the greater good or whatever.”
He regarded her as she cooked. “That’s fine too. Train yourself as an emergency responder. You don’t even have to fight, Lorna. There’s search and rescue, there’s moving rubble, shielding people, there’s what we did today where you redirected attacks. You don’t have to be in the thick of things to help, unless you want to.”
“Yeah.” She noted, poking at the vegetables. “You’re right. I just need to be more proactive next time. Too bad I can’t go fix all the damage, I’d be able to get it done pretty fast, at least the bones and electrical stuff for all the buildings.” But that would be too obvious, and the cover up for what had happened was too thin already. “Oh, while we’re on the topic, apparently one of your distant relatives is talking to Alex. He’s not buying the official stories about San Francisco or Vegas. So now you can say for certain that paranoia runs in your family.” She poured the eggs in, laughing a little. “And being right when it sucks to be right, too.”
“Relative?” Scott raised his eyebrows at that. There were only a few candidates that he could think of, and most of them were people he had no interest in ever talking to, let alone seeing.
"Yeah, you'll have to ask Alex about it." She shook the little skillet and flipped half the omelet over. "Apparently the kid just e-mailed him out of nowhere."
“Kid?” Scott found that interesting. “I’ll send him an email later about it. If the kid is anything like the rest of the family....”
Lorna shrugged. “Dunno. If he’s like you two I’d like to meet him.” She smiled and plated Scott’s omelet, using one of her earrings to float it over to him. Then she facepalmed and sent a fork after as well. She could have just used the fork in the first place, but whatever.
He grinned at her. “Thanks. Looks good.” It tasted really good, too. “I might like to meet him too.”
She nodded and started on her own breakfast. “Okay, now that we’ve had a heartwarming real life bonding moment, I have to ask you something crappy.”
“You can ask me anything at any time,” Scott replied. Then he amended. “Almost any time.”
“What, no three am calls for no reason?” Lorna asked with a laugh. She prodded at her veggies. “Okay, so you dreamed of Krakoa, right? What version did you dream? The version that happened, or the made up version the Professor implanted in our brains?”
“The...what?” Scott rubbed at his temple, trying to call up that whole sequence of events. He’d known Xavier had planted a lot of things in his mind, but in the jumble from dreams... “I don’t know. I know he messed with my head a lot. There was a reason I lost respect for him.”
“Yeah.” Lorna noted, continuing with her omelet prep. “I think all the stuff he did my brain got knocked loose after I dreamed of Genosha. Things are. . . not the way I originally remembered this time around.”
“I’ll have to dig around in my head. Maybe have Emma help,” Scott replied. “Even after he got exposed...not everything was fixed. There’s a lot I wonder about even now. And just who else has things messed up in their heads.”
“Yeah.” She made a face and plated her own omelet, and joined Scott at the table. “Man, these dreams.” She shook her head. “If we ever figure out who did this to us, that’s a person I could hurt.”
"You might have to get in line." He took another bite, then fell silent as he ate.
Lorna nodded and ate her omelet as well. She didn’t like silence very much, so after a few bites she piped up with, “What color do you want the blanket for your baby to be? I need to get started on it now, I have a lady who’s about to pick a shawl for her wedding and that’ll take me a long time to finish.”
“Anything but red,” Scott said, leaving it up to her. “Neutral color, too. Not pink or blue. I’d like our daughter to not be too conditioned.”
“Awww, it’s a girl? You’re so doomed.” She laughed a little. “Is black and white okay? I’ve heard stark colors like that are good for babies’ eyes.”
“That’s fine. Maybe a dash of color or sparkles?” Scott figured babies liked sparkles.
“Sparkles are a definite yes.” Lorna said with a laugh. “I can make her a cute little sweater in a softer color, if you want. She won’t be looking at that as much.” Yellow would be cute, and not at all Christmas-y.
Scott grinned at her. “Yeah...I think we’d like that.”
Lorna smiled back. “Good. I’m going to enjoy being an aunt, I think. All the cute and none of the staying up all night wishing the baby would just be quiet.”
“Except on nights when you babysit,” Scott pointed out. Innocently.
“Sure, but that won’t be for months. I mean, are you really going to trust me with your fragile little snowflake?” She laughed a little. Of course she would take her baby sitting duties very seriously, but she didn’t exactly scream ‘responsible’, and Alex was only marginally better.
“Maybe when she’s old enough to drink.”
Lorna snorted. “That sounds about right.” She grinned at Scott and went back to her breakfast.