Players:
Summary: Theo tries to ask Chloe out. Tries is the operative word.
Date: Thursday, January 20th, 2011. 1:34pm
Log Title: Anti-Dance
Rating: G
Xavier Mansion - Gymnasium
This big room with wooden floors is build with powered students in mind; the entire room is power proof. Blast the walls all you like, they are not breaking. The gym can either be one large room and it also has dividers to make it two smaller gyms. This large Gym has basketball nets, equipment to set up equipment badminton, volleyball, hockey, soccer, gymnastics, fencing, and everyone's favorite, dodge ball.
It's not uncommon for students to set the gym up with weird and wonderful equipment, although it is a little eccentric to see quite so much lumber stacked up. And the reason? Chloe is doing a little work out, dressed in running shorts and a t-shirt. It seems to be a workout that involves kicking through as many wooden boards in a single go as she possibly can. So far she's up to the grand total of three in a single kick and wow does she have the bruises to show for it!
Theo hasn't come with such a vast amount of equipment. He's coming to practice his systema that Connor's been teaching him. He got off to a slow start, but he is competent enough now that he doesn't feel the need to wait until everybody is almost ready for curfew before he practices in the gym. He doesn't want to look silly. He has entered the room with a purpose, to work out. However, upon arriving, he has found a different purpose. He's been slightly awkward around Chloe since arriving back at the school, but his attitude has been better toward most people.
"Hey Chloe, what's up?" he asks with a smile. He himself wears a T-shirt and gym shorts, but carries no bag with him. Only a water bottle to re-hydrate with.
"Trying to push my power limits. I can't let myself be this slow in another crisis," Chloe says, lining herself up for another high kick that smashes clean through two of the wooden boards. "People got hurt because I was only fast enough to protect myself and I don't think I can have that on my conscience. Not if I can do anything at all to stop it."
The technopath makes a slight face. "People got hurt because a bunch of bigots came shooting at everybody," he says. "Not because you were too slow. I could only mess up their radio connection. You were able to do a lot more than I was." He reconsiders his statement after he makes it. Not exactly the image he was going for, but talking about liquefying a man into a puddle isn't the image he's going for, either. He reflexively twitches at the loud crack of the boards. "You were fantastic."
"Except every time I dodged other people got hit by the stray bullets. If could move faster I'd have been able to stop them before they could even fire a shot," Chloe counters, picking up the bits of wood and sorting the fragments. Any sections large enough to re-use go back on the pile and the rest go into a large box. "Besides if I'm going to feel lousy about it then I might as well channel it into something productive! Better to train myself to exhaustion than sit around sulking all day."
With a tip of the head to the side and an arch of his brow, Theo nods concedingly. "Fair enough," he answers with a grin. Always impressed with Chloe's upbeat demeanor. He starts to stretch, preparing to do his own workout, and begins his first kata. He lets a silence that is a little longer than comfortable fill before asking his next question. "So how was Christmas?" he asks. "Have a good time with your family?" He arcs one hand in front of him, trying to keep his posture straight.
Chloe rolls her shoulders in a lazy shrug. "It wasn't too bad. My sister was constantly asking me about being at a school for superheroes," she replies. "And Heather came to visit. I think my folks must have spent more on food for us two than everyone, including family friends, ate during the entire week. How about you? Practically everyone had been talking about how weird you were acting in the run up. Did you get something cool?"
Theo turns a bit red at the comment. "Yeah," he says. "I got to see my sisters. Tony came with me to make sure my older sister wouldn't try to keep me with her and her husband. Amazing what a multi-billionaire superhero can do for your image," he adds with a grin. "I'm sorry I didn't tell any of you before what happened. Friends of Humanity burned my house to the ground just before I came here. Most of my family was inside." A bit of a sad note to add talking about Christmas, but he figures it helps to understand…really his whole last year. "Didn't want to go back because I was afraid they'd do the same to my sister. So, sorry for being so weird. I guess I was just a bit paranoid." He finishes out the kata, and forces on a bigger smile. "But, things are better now."
"I guessed something horrible had probably happened," Chloe admits, picking out another board. "But it wouldn't have helped you to try make you talk about it before you were ready. I'm glad that things are slowly beginning to settle for you though! I bet they were all /totally/ stunned to see you huh?"
"Yeah, they pretty much dog piled me. My little sister is like a monkey. I decided not to call ahead of time, I didn't want them to worry about what to get me and stuff," Theo details. "I got them some stuff. It's kinda nice having money to spend on them. My family was never all that rich." He pauses his workout, "Speaking of which, I hope you liked your present. Those razors were really cool. I've never seen anything like them before." He adds a sly smile. "Been using them to shave." He hasn't, but he remembers her note warning him to not shave with them.
Chloe sighs. "Boys. Tell them not to shave with something because they'd probably die and what do they do?" Chloe huffs, scowling at Theo. "Well if cutting yourself with it somehow transports you back into the demon realm don't come crying to me." With a wink she adds "And seriously you shouldn't spend so much on gifts for people. It makes it really embarrassing when they haven't even got around to buying any cards for people. I couldn't face the crowds this year, not after everything that happened, so I had to miss out on a lot of my last minute shopping."
"I'm just teasing," the boy counters. "I didn't really shave with it." Theo winces at the additional comment. "Sorry," he says. "I didn't want to make you embarrassed. I just wanted to do something really nice. I didn't mean for you to feel you had to get something big and fancy. You're a really pretty girl, and I thought you deserved a really pretty present." His voice gets forcibly more nonchalant through the last sentence, and he claps his hand over his fist to make a popping sound once, trying to break his own tension.
"I /did/ like the free lessons though. That was pretty cool and way less awkward than jewelry," Chloe admits, setting the board up and smashing it with a short sharp punch. "One thing I found out was I can run all the way to Chicago in about a day. How cool is that? I mean it's not quite as good as Connor teleporting there and back in five minutes, but it means I can make trips normal people need a car for whenever I feel like it."
Theo's confidence seems to return with Chloe's appreciation of the lessons. "Cool, I know you always talked about how you think we should have sword fighting lessons, so I thought you'd enjoy them." He chews on his lip briefly, "So what's that like when it's so crazy cold outside, isn't that like, major wind chill?" he asks. "It's already freezing out there, and then running at a few hundred miles per hour on top of that."
"Uhm I can only run at about a hundred and eighty miles an hour top. Comfortably I stick to maybe a hundred or so," Chloe explains while collecting the latest load of broken wood. "And to be honest I don't really notice. I'm adapted to pretty much ignore wind chill and when you're running that fast you get really warm. The biggest danger was ice, because if I lost my footing and skidded out in front of a car then it'd be pretty messy."
Theo makes a face at the possible situation, "Ouch, yeah, that'd be really bad," he agrees. He starts doing single strikes in the air, practicing his form. It's nothing fancy, but muscle memory is always good to develop for martial arts. "Maybe you should stay away from road trips when it's icy."
Chloe shrugs. "If I don't learn when it's fairly safe what will I do when ice monsters attack? Or a rogue cold mutant tries to make us all into mutant popsicles?" she sticks her tongue out. "Better risk a little danger now than be unprepared for it when it comes looking for me later."
"I think that's what the danger room is for. Just don't get yourself splattered by a semi, okay?" Theo asks. "We don't want to have to take a life insurance policy out on you," he turns back the old comment Chloe made once when Theo was earning himself a pounding from Jordan.
The boy takes a deep breath, holding it for a moment before letting it out. "So have you heard about the school dance coming up?" Theo adds, "I hear that it's gonna be pretty fun. Roaring twenties, or something like that."
Chloe shrugs. "I was never really one for school dances," she admits. "Me and my friends would always go to the anti-dances held by the alternate scene. At least until we got old enough to start holding them with booze, then our parents kinda banned us from going." She grins. "I don't think I'll be going to be honest, might run back home for my birthday. Which you're not allowed to buy me a gift for, okay?"
Theo looks like he just got run over by a truck, the truck backed up, and ran over him again. All he seems to be able to respond with is a helpless stare. "I…" he scrambles mentally for a response, but all the extra IQ points that give him straight A's are failing him at the moment.
"No arguments! You already got me one stupidly expensive gift and I'd feel terrible if you got me another one," Chloe adds trying her hand on a double board punch. Which shatters, but seems to take far more effort than punching the single board did. "I'm teaching Heather to dance for this one. You know she's going with Connor? Potential winner of unexpectedly adorable couple of the year if you ask me."
Theo watches the board shatter into splinters, finding a degree of empathy in the event, and then his eyes shift back to Chloe. "How about dinner?" he asks, making a final attempt. "Nothing fancy. I won't do anything stupidly expensive. Don't you want to see how they do at the dance?" He runs with the thought, knowing that with Chloe's super speed, he doesn't have long to finish the proposal. "I'd go with you." He may seem slow for Chloe's fastworldness, but right now he's downright frozen still.
"Well, I suppose going for dinner with a friend wouldn't be so bad," Chloe admits, shrugging. "But I think I'm still going to skip the dance. It just won't be enjoyable for me. All the music would be painfully slow and trying to dance at that pace would cramp my muscles up like you couldn't believe. The last time I tried moving slowly for any extended periods of time I felt like I was on fire."
"I don't really know how to dance, anyway," the technopath admits. "So maybe it's just as well. We should have our own anti-dance party! We'll go…" he glances past Chloe in-specifically for a moment. "Do something cooler. Like putt-putt or lasertag or something. But if we go laser tag, I'm so not being on the opposite team from you." Theo smiles hopefully.
"Dancing is easy providing you have a little rhythm and don't let little things like people watching distract you," Chloe points out with a shrug. "Putt-putt? Is that another name for golf? Because if it is then I'm not sure you could ever call it cool. Unless you play in a blizzard or something. But hey why not? We could get a group of friends together and hang out, it'd be nice."
"And provided you don't move at six times the beat's speed," Theo adds with a teasing grin. "Yeah, and if everybody else goes to the dance, then we can just do it by ourselves." That's his hope. "Yeah, it's kinda like golf, I guess," he admits. "But it was just something off the top of my head, we could do something else."
"Or we could reschedule for a time everyone can attend," Chloe suggests brightly. "It's always more fun when a bunch of friends goes out than when just two or three can make it, don't you think?"
Theo doesn't comment, but the look on his face betrays that he doesn't agree. "Well, we'll see what happens," he says. "Think of some place you'd want to go, that way you don't feel I've spent too much, sound good?" He steps back to where he stashed his water bottle, picking it up and squirting some of the water into his mouth. "I gotta get to class, but I'll catch you later, okay?"
