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| Beast of Burden; Cyclops/Surge | |
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| Topic Started: Oct 14 2010, 06:30 AM (384 Views) | |
| Surge | Oct 14 2010, 06:30 AM Post #1 |
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Unregistered
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September 13th, 5:40PM Walking to a teacher’s office always held some sort of dread over it. Noriko wasn’t in trouble, she hadn’t done anything wrong, she was actually heading to the Headmaster’s office of her own free will, which made the impending dread all the more confusing. She had tried every excuse she could think of to not go through with this. “He’s busy. He’s not interested in my problems. He’ll be offended. “, All those thoughts had crossed her mind as she left the dorms and headed towards his office. It had grown to be too much for her to hold in, these feelings she’d been having. Of course, she remained mostly the same around her peers, all spunky and tough, no sort of sadness coming through her brown eyes, but in private she was still reeling from the aftermath of an event that had taken place more than a year prior. She couldn’t escape it, the feelings of loss and sense of dark brooding that haunted every moment she wasn’t around somebody she could use to take her mind off of the empty hole in her heart. Everybody had lost something to that…that monster. She couldn’t help but think that her problems were petty when they sat next to what a few others had lost to Apocalypse. Nori’d lost family, but she knew others who had clearly lost a piece of themselves to the would-be Mutant Conqueror’s attacks. She felt like she should grow up. Move on. Forget about them because they weren’t coming back. But simultaneously, she realized that something like that, total abandonment of the issue, wasn’t an option. She’d found out some time later that her little brother was still alive. She had something to live for, something to defend. She tried to keep in touch, of course, but with half the world between them, it wasn’t easy. Even so, with Keitaro as a sort of torch to light her way, she couldn’t forgive herself for not being there when her parents died. When they were murdered by a wannabe dictator with a God complex. Surge arrived there at his office, her eyes shrink-wrapped in tears, a gloomy twinge to her expression. She sucked up and wiped her eyes on her forearms, catching her reflection in the metallic sheen of her gauntlets. Shaking her head at the weakness playing out on her face, she poked her head in the doorframe and rapped on it a few times. “Mr. Summers? I…er.” She stepped the rest of the way into the door, clasping both hands together in front of her, the same stance she would take on as a child when she’d crossed her father. It was a look of disappointment in herself. Noriko’s body language was pensive, her expression meek and gloomy at the same time. She began to think that she shouldn’t have come here. She should have bothered Jay with this. Her thoughts were a little skewed by the electricity running through her muscles and veins. No. She needed advice from the big boys on this one. Besides, Scott Summers definitely knew what it was like to lose family. “I’m sorry to bug you, Mr. Summers. But…I was wondering if we could talk?” She cast her eyes down at the floor for a second, letting her gauntlets fall to her side, the cyan glow reflecting off of the wood of the door frame. Looking back up to him, she sputtered forth a few more weak words. “It’s about my parents.” |
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| Cyclops | Oct 14 2010, 08:13 AM Post #2 |
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There were few people who understood the absolute geekiness of Scott's obsession with aircraft. Sure even the newest student knew that the Blackbird was Mr. Summers's baby and one should never ever even think about touching it without permission because his wife was telepathic and she'd probably hear it and tell him. But they probably didn't know that he had been designing airplanes long before his parents' accident. They probably weren't very good, but once he was older, the Professor had seen that in him and coaxed him out of his shell by giving him free rein to work on making the repurposed XR-71b something beyond belief. There was a lot of studying and hard work put into it though. Natural talent was fine, but he wasn't like X-Factor's Box, or the Brotherhood's Razorback, Forge of the HFC. His knowledge of tech and machine was no more than any human was capable of, not mutant ability enhanced. He had to study, and read aviation magazines, on and offline voraciously. Dry dull reading to most people. Scott found it absolutely thrilling, and he could expound on the latest and greatest aircraft for hours, boring Jean or Warren or whoever was around with his thoughts for modifying the Blackbird with this or that advancement. Right now, he was reading an article at Aerospace Engineering Online, about the new developments in scramjet propulsion in which the combustion process takes place in supersonic airflow. A recent test flight of the X-62 B "Whirlwind" craft had reached Mach 7 which was still well below the theorized Mach 12 minimum using this technology. Scott was already thinking of heading down to the Danger Room to use the engineering program to try and model a theoretical scramjet engine and see if he could get Box down here to make it happen, when there was a soft rapping on his open door. Looking up from his work, he saw Noriko Ashida standing there, looking so absolutely crestfallen that even Scott, not entirely competent at judging facial expressions, could see it like a flashing neon sign. “I’m sorry to bug you, Mr. Summers. But…I was wondering if we could talk? ... It’s about my parents.” Scott rose, something that had been ingrained in him from a very young age, and he said, "Of course, Miss Ashida, please, come in, come in. I was just doing a little research on aeronautic engineering," he said, "I pretend it's entirely work related, but the truth is I'm about as interesting as dry toast, and reading about windshear is something I find exciting." He indicated the chair in front of his desk, "Your parents were lost in the Apocalypse events, weren't they. I'm very sorry we didn't stop him in time. I'm sure that's little comfort, but it's the best that I can do, that and promise that if there's a next time we'll be better prepared." |
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| Surge | Oct 14 2010, 04:57 PM Post #3 |
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She came into the office, looking around. The last time she had actually been in here, she wasn’t a student yet, her thoughts had been in an uproar, fragmented ideas and notions blitzing around inside a skull that had just come down off of a two year high from the drug’s she’d been using to curb her natural abilities. She hadn’t had the gloves then, either. McCoy was still building them. Sweaty, shaky, sick to her stomach, and altogether still unhappy, Noriko didn’t find it surprising at all the she didn’t remember the interior too well. Here in the now, she was still unhappy, but for entirely different reasons. "Of course, Miss Ashida, please, come in, come in. I was just doing a little research on aeronautic engineering, I pretend it's entirely work related, but the truth is I'm about as interesting as dry toast, and reading about windshear is something I find exciting.” The electrokinetic crossed from the door to the front of the desk, listening to Mr. Summers go on about his hobby in a self deprecating manner. That really wasn’t fair to himself. She had hobbies that others might consider boring, too, at least she used to. Surge used to really get into tech gadgets and stuff, back when she was actually allowed in her father’s shop, liking to find the ins and outs of how they worked, as opposed to her friends, who really only liked to use them. That had all changed when she started killing anything that had a batter just by being near it. That block had been removed thanks to Beast’s ingenuity, but she had never really picked her hobby back up. As she reached the simple black office chair, obviously there more for practicality than prettiness, she wrapped her gauntleted hands around the top, gripping it like a vice as Cyclops switched topics to the matter at hand. She forced back tears as he apologized about not being able to save them, about how they knew now what they were up against and if it ever happened again, they’d be ready. That struck her. She knew she was being selfish, perhaps incredibly so, but she didn’t give a damn. If Apocalypse ever struck again, she wanted to be the one to send him back to oblivion. “Mr. Summers, I don’t blame anybody for what he did to my people, to my country, my parents. I really don’t.” She took a pause, twisting the swivel chair around with one hand while placing the other at the back of her head. Her hair stood on end, the static surrounding the gauntlet going to work briefly until she reached the arm over her chest and to her shoulder. “That whole deal was a sneak attack, nobody saw it coming until it was too late to save everything.” She let go of the chair, placing her hands behind her back at a sort of relaxed stance of attention. Her downcast face turned quickly to anger and she looked up at the headmaster. “And if he does come back, I want to be there.” She was dead set on being an X-Man now. This year, her third one here, would be an interesting one. Academics and basic power training classes would be supplemented by team tactics and leadership training, as well as more proactive things like Danger Room sessions and a heavier emphasis on defense and martial arts training than before. She wanted to make herself useful to the team, now that she had a decent reign on her powers. The anger left her face, replaced by something between melancholy and confusion. “But this isn’t about how I feel about Apocalypse…its more about…” She choked a little on her words, her thoughts tripping them up. “How did you cope with losing them? How do you cope with knowing you’ll never see them again, be able to show them how far you’ve come?” Her shoulders slumped. She finally gave in and stepped around the seat, sinking into it and looking up to the man who, through the school that he ran, had become her patron, a distant sort of father figure in absence of the real thing. |
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| Cyclops | Oct 14 2010, 06:49 PM Post #4 |
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Punches from the Punch Dimension
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Noriko hemmed and hawed a bit, fiddling with the chair, with her gauntlets. Scott, as one of the few staff members here who used external means to control his powers, perhaps felt a slight kinship with the students who were also incapable of conscious control, and watching her tools crackle and glow with energy, he was reminded that he wanted to set up a schedule to train her how to repair and maintain them. It was possible they'd eventually be able to develop a more streamlined version. He wondered idly if he could bring Jeffries in here to work on them... The girl told him she wanted him to be in on the battle should it ever happen again and Scott thought about reminding her that the X-Men were not a means for revenge, that if she was going to want to join the active team, she was going to have to channel that anger into controlled productivity, but in an uncommon moment of sensitivity, he forwent the lecture, and let her come to the real point of her visit today. “How did you cope with losing them? How do you cope with knowing you’ll never see them again, be able to show them how far you’ve come?” Scott sighed and said, "Well, this is not really something I can teach you, Miss Ashida. My way of coping might not work for you, but I'll try to explain. My parents sacrificed themselves to save my brother and I, and part of the reason I am what I am, that I do what I do, is to be worth that sacrifice. If I squander this life they gave me, if I become a bad person, a lazy person, a worthless person, then they died for no reason. I don't know if I'm doing enough, but every person I have ever helped, every student here who might have gone down another road if not worse, every life I have ever saved, is a tribute to them, to make them, wherever they are now, to make them proud." He pushed a small box of tissue across the desk towards her, and he said, "There's no set time for recovery. There's no one here, even those of us who have experienced the same loss, who can tell you how to grieve or how not to. But, all I can suggest, is you find a way to make it right for you. You find that way to make it right." |
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| Surge | Oct 14 2010, 09:36 PM Post #5 |
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Unregistered
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Her expression became less forlorn as she listened to Mr. Summer’s tell her his story. Her mind wandered in and out of concentration, as it usually did when she found herself dealing with personal issues. Brown eyes passed from the simple office desk with its bland coloring and then to the deep crimson ruby shield that covered his eyes. She’d never thought about how much she could identify with him before. Granted, she could use her eyes without worrying that she would destroy everything she laid them on, and these gauntlets weren’t much of a problem now that she was used to wearing them, but her problem with the equipment wasn’t so much in the physical hindrance they presented as it was the fear of living without them. Without the gloves, she would walk into a room, shut everything electronic in it down, and then be faced with a maelstrom of rapid thought and discomfort that would eventually cause her to lose grip, electrifying everything and everybody in range. Without these marvels of science that Dr. McCoy had made for her, she was a walking death trap. She owed the furry blue mutants everything. He had given her a chance at a normal life. As normal a life as a mutant could live in these trying times, anyways. She always wondered how that sort of thought process affected Mr. Summers. It had to be tenfold with him, unable to set eyes on anybody without a red tint. Unable to see his friends and family without the aid of that special visor that locked his eyes away forever. That was a handicap she would never be able to comprehend Her thoughts snapped back as he finished speaking. It was then that Noriko realized she’d been crying. She took a few of the thin paper sheets and wiped her cheeks, and then blew her nose, letting out a half-hearted and socially inept smile at that always awkward moment when she let loose a nasal foghorn that could probably be heard all the way down the hall. “I think its just…thank you by the way,” she said, nodding to the tissue box. “I think its just that. My father, he hated me. He said things to me. He questioned my mother’s morals, said there was no way a mutant could be present in his family.” She looked towards the ceiling, then let her head swing around the room, looking at all of the models. Mr. Summers wasn’t lying. He really did like airplanes. She looked at the one sitting on his desk, wondering why he’d chosen that one over all the others to adorn his daily workspace. “I guess I feel like I lost out on the chance I could have had to show him that mutants were worth something. Show him that they could use…” She held up her arms, storage coils casting neon blue outwards. “That I could use this to do some good, not just to dishonor his name.” She let out a sigh, letting her arms fall once again to rest on those of the chair, eyes once again focusing on the Headmaster. |
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| Cyclops | Oct 14 2010, 10:33 PM Post #6 |
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He waved off her thanks for the tissue with a 'don't worry about it' sort of flip of his hand, uncomfortable with the tears, but not surprised by it. Scott was never very comfortable when girls cried, not the students, not his wife, not any of them, but in his time here as the headmaster of the school, he had seen more of it then he ever wanted. She told him then how her father had denied her and how his death meant she would never be able to prove to him that she wasn't a monster. Scott held up one hand, "Hang on there, a minute, Miss Ashida, I think you've gotten a little twisted around. Living a good and strong life to make your parents proud is different from living for them. I can't say a thing about your father's prejudice except to say that it's not a story that's unfamiliar. Most of our students here have very similar experiences, and it sometimes makes me wonder what my parents would have thought, if they would have looked at Alex and I as freaks or if they would have understood that we were still their sons, no matter what evolution had changed in us. Humanity, though, has a lot of fear and fear can make them cruel. Is it an excuse? No. But it is something we have to learn to accept." With a sigh he said, "I'm afraid I don't know how to help you to channel your grief, and I'm not a man with a great deal of religious faith. You might consider talking to Mr. Wagner about that. He's a good man to talk to about spiritual matters and he might have some words of wisdom to help you reconcile your personal beliefs." Getting up, he came around the desk and sat in the other chair in front of his desk, next to her. "Noriko, I don't know how much my opinion matters in this, but let me tell you who it is I see when I look at you. I see a smart and responsible young lady, who was dealt a really bad hand by fate. You could have used your powers to do incredibly evil things, lash out at the world, and made them hurt the way you do. You didn't do that. You found your way to us, and you've worked so amazingly hard to learn how to turn your perceived disability into a remarkable capability. I don't know if your father would be proud of you, but I know that I am. For what it matters, I am very very proud." |
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| Surge | Oct 15 2010, 01:10 AM Post #7 |
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Noriko wasn’t sure she deserved the praise that Mr. Summers was laying on her. During the two years between her departure from Japan and arrival at the Institute, she had done things she wasn’t proud of. With her mind all in a flurry from the effects of her powers, her inhibitions were skewed with bad judgement. She’d stolen money; she’d used that money to buy drugs. She’d scared off the people who threatened the little tent cities she lived in with her powers. She was hopeless during those two years, and she truly had come dangerously close to using her powers for less than noble things. But that was all before she’d found her home here in New York. The worlds Cyclops flung her way at that moment forced a smile to cross her face. She was glad to make him proud. His suggestion to speak with Mr. Wagner was something to consider, though she’d never admit it. Noriko was not into the whole faith thing. She couldn’t see placing hope in something she couldn’t see. Her life had been dominated by cold hard fact, and so cold hard facts are what she believed in. That was part of what made her the angriest about her parents. The afterlife was a new idea, but deep down inside, Surge could not place her beliefs in something as flowery as a trip to paradise after death. She firmly believed that the human body’s ultimate destiny, regardless of the morals of the personality who inhabited it, was to be relegated to dirt and worm food. She wondered if even Mr. Wagner could convince her otherwise. She pushed back away from the desk and lifted herself out of it. She passed her eyes once more around the room. It was getting really difficult for her to stay in one spot. She needed to go blow off some steam. Maybe run a few dozen laps around the estate before curfew. Looking back from the décor to the workbench by the door and back to Cyclops, she thought about asking him about what kind of stuff he worked on in here. She quickly decided against it, feeling as if she was already soaking up too much of the guys time to bother him with idle conversation. “I think I’m going to go run off some energy, Mr. Summers. I’ll leave ya alone. I really appreciate you letting me vent like this.” She started towards the door. Reaching it, she place a metal-clad hand on the frame, turning back for a second. “I’m looking forward to Tactics Training, Mr. Summers.” Pending his response, she prepared to turn and head out. She was hungry, but she decided she would definitely put a few miles onto her sneakers beforehand. |
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| Cyclops | Oct 15 2010, 01:32 AM Post #8 |
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Whether or not Noriko believed what he said to her, about her, Scott couldn't know and it didn't even really matter to him if she believed it at the top of her mind. In her heart, the words would resonate, because anyone who knew Scott knew he didn't compliment idly. If he wasn't impressed, he would plainly tell you how disappointed he was. Had she done bad things before coming here? Yes. So had he. So had so many of them. It was what she had done since being here that mattered. She rose to leave and Scott caught sight of her glancing over at his workbench. He stood as well and said, "Why don't you come down to my electronics lab in the sub basement sometime, right off the Hangar? Let's see if we can get these gauntlets slimmed down... a little more... fashionable as my wife would say." He managed a small half smile, "Plus, I think it would be good for you to learn how to maintain them yourself in case of an emergency." Opening the door for her, Scott said, to her telling him she was going for a run, he nodded, "Have a good run. There's a path through the forest that's usually pretty empty around this time of day. Good place to clear your head." Then, she was gone, and he went back to his desk. Picking up the DeHavilland Mosquito model, he ran his fingers over its repaired wing and looked at the newspaper clipping framed on the wall, thoughtfully. |
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2:47 PM Jul 11