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Summary: Three students meet up in the gym at Xavier's School, and discover shared interests.
Date: February 21, 2010
Log Title Gymnasium - Shared Interests
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.
Having cleared most of the gym equipment to the sides except for a series of plastic cones and what appear to be some sort of radar guns Chloe is in full on exercise mode. Cheesey eighties pop music blasts out on a stereo set up in the corner, but it barely drowns out the rapid footsteps and occasional screech of shoes against the floor.
Mike wanders over to the gym. He did the morning web-chat with his parents, finished his homework, and became bored making shadow puppets on his sleeping roommate. Still too much snow outside, but no need to plow, and having done the daily bike-merger, he's at really loose ends. A check of his organizer (several different-colored 3M sticky pads, rubberband, and three colored pens) has revealed that he hasn't done his tumbling passes in over two weeks. Shocking neglect of basic training. So he's come to the gym, and… it's all … scroggled up. He watches what's happening for a moment before deciding what to do next.
Topher enters the gym, hes planning on testing exactly how much of a punch his powers can do at once and apparently the gym is power-proof, he's wearing white and grey camouflage shorts, a white Life and Glory t-shirt, grey coverse, a white fabric belt, and has his earphones in playing his music very loudly to help drown out the voices, when he spots Chloe and the stereo, he pulls out his earphones and groanes, "Horrible, horrible music".
It takes a few laps at close to top speed before Chloe notices she's not actually alone anymore. Unable to stop gracefully she resorts to something akin to a long slide, her shoes leaving streaks of burnt sole on the gym floor. "Uhmhisorryformovingeverything," she blurts. "Justgettingalittlebitofpersonaltrainingin."
Mike blinks, and plays that back internally at normal speed. His reply is in a slightly electronica-tinged voice, which rather goes along with his robot-not-in-disguise look. He's wearing a school training uniform, one that covers his body completely leaving only head, hands, and feet, and the pattern is an unfortunate orange and white that reminds many an onlooker of summer and creamsicles. Creamsicles the size of a tall teenager.
"Iit'sz not a proobblemm. Chllloeey, right? I juzt need a gymnnastics tumblinng run, I cann do it iin the middle orr sidez or whaatever."
Topher has no idea what Chloe just said, but he got the gist of it from her surface thoughts, "Urrm, it's cool," he looks over at the metal guy, hmmm, no thoughts?, thats kinda refreshing, "Hey".
Chloe begins tapping her fingers against the floor. "Sorry. Hard to talk when I'm going flat out," she says, forcing the words out one by one. "Chloe would be me, yeah? Have we met before…?"
Mike nods quickly to Chloe, figuring if he goes fast enough to make him dizzy if he was a human, she'll see it as a slow, langorous nod. And he should know who all the people here are, but he hasn't actually met Topher yet. He's seen him before, of course.
He plays back his standard and somewhat infamous first-greeting, using his internal voice sample/radio trick. Peter Gabriel's voice from Big Time: "HIThere!" directed to Topher. Of course, now he can continue in his own voice, which is both good and bad.
"Ii'm Mike Drakos, beeen here siince middle of Jaanurary." He offers a steel, chrome, and tire-rubber hand to Topher to shake or ignore as he sees fit. Some of the students are creeped out by it, which he finds kind of funny. Others aren't, which is also cool.
Topher smiles and shakes Mike's hand, "Hey, I'm Topher Matthews, its nice to meet you, i joined in december," he does wince slightly when he gets close enough that he gets some of Mike's thoughts, he waves at Chloe, "Nice to meet you too, Chloe".
"Topher? I think I met your roomie," Chloe says with a grin. Her speech becoming more normal by the word. "Did he get in trouble for trashing the painting in the hallway?" She glances back at Mike. "You'll have to forgive me for not being as good at putting names to faces. It's hard to keep in synch with normal people, so I kinda suck at picking up peoples names unless I slow down and actually talk to them."
Mike has very precise thoughts, for a teenager. He catches the wince, and wonders what it's about. Did I squeeze too hard? Need to check the grip strength Mikey.
He'd start setting up the gymnastic/tumbling area, but first he needs to know what Topher wants to do too. It might make a difference to the setup.
Mike also laughs when Chloe says that thing about missing names. "HAH! Yyah, I'm juszt anotherr underrclasz dronne. Hardly mmemorrable."
Topher smiles and shakes his head, "I'm not sure, which one, Owen or Dustin?," Topher doesn't try to read peoples minds but sometimes he gets surface thoughts, a lot of the time he doesn't know hes doing it, "No you didn't squeeze too hard, the wince was a reaction to a side effect of my powers, and i don't need any equipment thanks".
"You have two roomies?" Chloe wonders, springing to her feet. "Dunstin, new kid. Says a lot of random things which don't make sense… Like Quickling. I mean do either of you know what one of those is?"
2 + 2 = 5, for sufficiently large values of 2. Mike looks over at Topher, "Telepath? Sorry man, that one seems to be more trouble than it's worth."
Of course he's backed off to a conversational distance where he's likely no longer a pain, too.
He looks over at Chloe. "A Quickling is a super-fast elf from D&D. Usually evil, but in this case I bet he's just thinking 'you're superfast'. Do you mind if I set up my tumbling run in the middle, or do you prefer on the side?"
Topher shakes his head, "No, Owen was my old roomie, but he left, Dustin's my new roomie," he thinks back, hes heard the term Quickling before, "I think it's a geek thing," Topher's from LA so he doesn't mean anything by geek, he nods at Mike, "Yeah i'm a telepath, im telekinetic too".
Chloe frowns. "So like Orlando Blooms character in those really long geek films only faster? Okaaaaaay I guess that sort of makes sense," bounding along she begins packing her stuff away. "I'm actually done with my workout. I spent a good twenty minutes pushing myself over a hundred miles and hour. So I deserve a little bit of rest."
Mike makes a police siren noise. "Breaking the LAW Miss Chloe. I can't go that faaszt except if I merge inn a race caar."
He looks over to Topher, "So you're like Jono but wiith a faace. Annd yeah, to be precise iit'z a gamer geek thinng. Aaz opposed to a caar geeek or sportz geek thinng. Annd… wait, Owen DID leave? I missed that. Huh."
He decides to start laying out the gymnastics area again, heading over to haul the heavy rubber floor protector into place.
Topher raises an eyebrow, "My squad leader?, how am i like him?" His eyes go black as he starts focusing his powers, time for the test he came here to do.
"I probably should get going fairly soon," Chloe decides, rapidly collecting up the gym gear she'd had out and dumping it back in place. "I've left myself twenty minutes to do all the assignments I've got due for next week in."
Mike answers from across the room where he's putting the last piece in place, "Telepathy annd TK, but hopefully you wonn't have the blowing up thing. That's like, three hourrsz at your speed, Chloe? Better get goinng."
He moves to the front of the tumbling run and starts moving forward, handstand, reverse, forward roll, stand, leg-balance, reverse roll to handstand. At reasonable but not extreme speed.
(Note, this is the longest run he's been able to do, and it's not a very difficult sequence at all.)
Topher waves at Chloe, "Well it was nice meeting you Chloe, good luck with the homework," he grins at Mike gymnastics, "Cool, you're a gymnast too?"
"Actually just the two hours. But I'd already got most of the work done during classes," Chloe offers absent-mindedly, grabbing her stereo and switching it off.
"Laters." And with a wave that's fast enough most people would struggle to see it she's off. Pushing a lazy sixty miles an hour down the hallway…
Mike says, while still hand-standing, "Yeah, only tumbling. Papa wanted me to keep my flexzibility while liftinng weightsz. I sztill do it for my coordination now thaat I'm all machiney."
He goes backwards through the routine, pausing to wave at Chloe at some point where he won't fall over. But she may be gone already… Yep. Darn superspeeders.
Topher waves as Chloe leaves, then takes a deep breath a focuses all his energy on the floor in front of him, his eyes go completly black and he is sent flying across the gym, just before he hits the wall he slows slightly and drops to the floor, he sits up laughing, "Fuck, that wasn't supposed to happen".
Mike runs over. "You OK?" He stays back a little, remembering the distance where the wince started, and just looks since Topher's laughing. "You weren't szupposed to blow up. Trying to flyy?"
Of course he has NO useful help for that endeavor but everyone loves to kibitz, right?
Topher flips to his feet, hes a gymnast too, "I'm good don't worry, i wasn't trying to fly, it was an expirement, but it didn't get the intended effect, no worries".
Mike's voice has a bit of humor, even though is face doesn't show it. Silly motionless robot face. "What were you trying to do? If you didn't wannt to fly, that was a good staart."
He'll wait for Topher to say anything else before he goes back to do his second tumbling run, though.
Topher shrugs, "I was attempting to see if it could run out, see if it would make the pain stop for a while, oh well i'll find another way," he walks over to stand in front of Mike just to check theres no change.
Mike stays still for the test. Still sensible at one foot away if one has the susceptibility. Of course, he's not LOUD unless he tries to be. And the remark from Topher gives him a quick thought. "Robyn is a psychic vampire. You might see if he helps it, but I'd say, talk to Addison or Jono first."
Yeah, when you hang around with the misery guy (Jono in this case), you hear all about the local expertise, right?
Topher srugs "nope, no change, oh well," he shakes his head, "Other people with mind based abilities can't help me, my powers are causing my brain to deteriorate," he points at the gym equipment, "Fancy a little competition?, by the way what is your power exactly?"
The robot boy says in a shocked/sympathetic tine, "brain deterioraation? Man. You seen Doc about thaat? He's the new school doctor, he's even better than the Shiaar magic fix-it maachines. He's a mutant heaaler."
Yeah, some competition might be nice. "I possess vehicles. Turn them into what I want. Was in one when it got totalled, and this is how I came out."
That's the highly abridged story, of course. He moves over towards the equipment. "I mostly know how to do tumbling and trampoliine."
Topher shakes his head, "I've spoken to him, he said he can't help," his eye widen, "Whoa, you can change cars?, i have gotta see that," he follows Mike over to the equipment.
Mike answers, "Any vehicle, really. Can't let anyone else drive right now, though." He looks skeptically at the parallel bars. "So what's your specialty?""
Topher grins, "i can't drive anyway," he shrugs, "I've got a good amount of skill in most areas, i have a preference for freestyle though".
"OK, you start then," Mike says. Yes, there is madness to this method: Mike is a competent, even good tumbler, but he's not THAT good as far as he knows. But this school has weird people. This Topher guy might be one of the mutant olympic acrobat gene guys.
Topher takes a deep breath and preforms a standing, back-handspring, back tuck, he grins, "Your turn Mike".
"Oh, HORSE it is," Mike laughs. Backwards stuff is hard for some kids, but for Mike it was always the sideways moves. Standing back hand-spring, back tuck. He makes a faint VROOM noise just before the kick off into the handspring.
Topher laughs, "Nice one metal man, ok, good luck with this one," ok here goes, front-handspring, step-out, round-off back-handspring, step-out, round-off back-handspring, full twisting layout.
Mike would boggle, but… ok. That's not the usual tumbling run, freestyle is SLIGHTLY different, but nothing ventured nothing broken, right?
He goes. Front-handspring, step-out, round-off, back-handspring, step-out, back-handspring, full-twisting-layout, "DARNIT! I forgot one!"
Topher grins, "Nice one Mike, it was close enough and i did have a slightly unfair advantage there, do you wanna set the next one?"
Mike shakes his head, not laughing but he would if he could make it sound right. "You're way beyonnd me, man. I never got farther thaan two hard movesz one after the otherr. You want a padawan learner?"
Why yes, Mike IS a geek, sometimes. About more than cars.
Topher shrugs, "Fair enough, you nearly had it though," he just gives Mike a blank look at his question, "A what?"
You know how some people do the palm-to-face thing? Mike tire-treads-to-face. "From Star Wars. Apprentice Jedi? You gotta know what Star Wars is, it's not physically poszible not to know that."
He hopes this isn't brain-damage speaking here, or that this guy hasn't been raised by apes or parents who don't believe in television and movies.
Topher ohhs, "Sorry, i've never watched Star Wars, so i dont know the quotes".
"How isz that possible, man?" Mike shakes his head. "We gotta get a screeening… Wait, no, you need privaszy. I will loan you my keyyfob wiith the HD copiesz, but donn't lose it. You're on my floor, right?"
Topher shrugs, "It just never appeled to me, but if you really think i should watch it i'll give it a go," he shrugs, "I think so, aren't all the guys dorms on the same floor?"
"Two wingsz, tho. Yeah, if you waant to see it right, don't watch the Phanntom Menace firszt. Watch New Hope, then nexzt two, then the firazt three laszt."
The buzz in Mike's voice is becoming more apparent and he taps the collar. "Darnit, gonna have to recharge my battery."
(Exeunt fading to black)
