Nova Artino is your Worst Nightmare (littlenightmare) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2020-09-19 22:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, michael guerin, nova artino |
Who: Nova Artino McLain and Michael Guerin
What: Michael uses his powers; Nova is intrigued
Where: Out of This World Mechanics
When: Before the Apokolips plot
Rating/Warnings: Low/none
Status: Complete
It was another day at the garage for Michael. Not that he would want to be anywhere else really. Well maybe a bar. But he enjoyed his work. Maybe he hadn’t gone to college and become an engineer. But he was a pretty damn good mechanic. His life was fairly simple, minus the whole suddenly being an alien and having powers thing, and he liked it that way.
He liked having Nova around too. I had been sort of an impulse to hire her but it was definitely working out. “You want to get started on the Ford?” Michael asked, nodding towards the truck.
“Sure,” Nova said, shooting Michael a smile. Really, working at the garage was more than she could have hoped for. She hadn’t noticed just how nice it would be to do something that was completely separate from the Family and the Family Business. It wasn’t that she disliked the Family Business - she knew since she was a child that that was her future, and she was proud of that, and proud of all the work her uncle had done - but still. Working at the garage was uncomplicated, and easy, and it was nice being able to tinker with things.
The biggest problem, of course, was that Michael was a good deal taller than her. A lot of people were a good deal taller than her, though she’d fight anyone who said as much, but it did mean that she had to make liberal use of step-stools and other implements to reach the tools she needed.
Right now, she was using a small chair to reach the shelf that the tool she needed was on, stepping on her tip-toes to reach. She started falling at the same time that she heard the chair leg snap, and she flailed, trying to catch her balance on a shelf that wasn’t firmly attached, bringing it and everything that was on it on top of her as she and the rest of it fell to the ground.
Michael heard the leg of the chair snap. His eyes followed the sound, watching as Nova fell. He wasn’t able to catch her, but he did move the shelf and tools that were about to hit her. Using his mind he froze them in mid air before flinging everything to the side and letting it drop to the ground. Away from Nova. Once that was taken care of he rushed to her side. “Nova!” he called out. “You okay?!”
Nova had thrown her arm up over her head in what was likely a futile gesture, but the expected tools didn't come, and she cracked open her eye in time to see the tools fly off in the opposite direction. She gaped at them for a second, and then Michael was at her side. "Did you see that?" she asked, turning to Michael. "What just happened?"
“Yeah,” Michael said nonchalantly. “Crazy,” he didn’t have time to get into his powers right now. Not when he was still worried about Nova. “Are you okay?” he repeated holding out a hand ot help her up. “Are you hurt?” Even if nothing had fallen on top of her, she had still fallen.
“I’m fine,” Nova said, standing up on her own as if she hadn’t noticed Michael’s hand. She grimaced a little as she stood. “Maybe a little bruised, but nothing I can’t walk off.” That wasn’t the important part though. The important part was that Micheal obviously knew something about why she hadn’t been brained by falling tools. “What the hell was that?” she demanded.
Michael wasn’t offended that she didn’t take his hand. Hell if someone was trying to help him up he probably would have done the same. “Uh, I guess the chair broke,” Michael replied, still looking at her with concern in his eyes. “You want some ice?” He wasn’t avoiding the question of his powers on purpose. Part of him wasn’t entirely sure that was what Nova was referring to.
“Uh huh,” Nova deadpanned, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “And I suppose a really strong breeze just carried off all those tools that were about to land on me too, right?” she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She wasn’t an idiot; it was clear as day that he was trying to avoid the topic.
“Something like that,” Michael offered with a sheepish smile. Hiding his powers had been instilled on him in the dreams thanks to Max. But it was different here. They weren’t the only ones that had powers. There was a whole network full of people. And he didn’t want to lie to Nova. “Or,” he began that sheepish look still on his face. “ I have telekinetic powers.”
Nova blinked slowly, processing that, swallowing a little. Telekinetic powers weren’t abnormal in her dreams - in fact, her uncle was the strongest telekinetics in her dream world. That still didn’t make it any less surprising here.
“That’s… pretty cool,” she admitted. “How much can you lift? Is there a weight limit? Or an… object limit?” Most telekinetics in her dream world weren’t especially strong - not like in the comic books. Without his helmet, even her uncle couldn’t cause much damage with it - though with his helmet, he topped cities and governments without breaking a sweat.
“Whoa,” Michael said, a grin forming on his face. “Slow down.” She sure seemed to be handling the news well. But then what did he expect from the girl that had no problem leading giants away from the shop? “I don’t think so. To either question,” he finally said. “But I haven’t exactly tested it out either.”
Nova’s eyes widened a little. “You haven’t tested it? Why not?” she demanded, and then, before he could answer, she grabbed him by the wrist and led him out the back of the shop to the yard where all their cars - the ones that were just used for parts these days, and the ones that they were trying to fix up - stayed. “Can you lift that car?” she asked, pointing toward one of the old muscle cars that was good only for scrap metal.
The worry Michael had about Nova vanished a bit when she practically dragged him outside. She seemed pretty okay. At least okay enough to hurry out back. Looked like he had prevented her from getting too hurt.
Well that was something Michael knew he could do. A small grin on his face he focused in on the car. It lifted up off the ground, high enough to fly over the other cars. With a small movement from his hand he moved it over a few cars to the next empty spot and sat it back down. He attempted to gently put it back down on the ground, but it ended up dropping rather abruptly. He still didn’t have full control of his powers. “Yeah,” he finally said verbally answering the question as well.
Nova winced when the car slammed into the cement, but her grimace was quickly replaced with the look of awe she’d had on her face when he’d started lifting cars in the first place. “That’s… that’s amazing,” Nova breathed. “This is huge! Imagine what you could do with this! We’ll definitely need to do more tests. I wonder where we could go to find heavier objects…”
Michael let out a small laugh at her excitement. That was probably the best reaction he had received to the news of his powers. “Alright,” he agreed. “I’ll let you figure out some tests to do later. Right now we have work to do.”