Letting Go

Summary:
July 18 2014: Bobby has a couple of visitors while trying out the Danger Room

Xavier's Institute Danger Room

The most advanced mutant training facility in Westchester County. With Ice Castles. And Dragons


Characters

NPCs

  • None

Mood Music:
[* None]


Bobby is actually in the danger room today. If he really means to help out around here it seems likely that he'll need to have a greater degree of control over his abilities than he generally has. There's other training to be had as well, but Nancy's out at the moment and conventional sparring practice will have to wait for later.

This is not one of the places he'd visited before when he'd been first learning basic control. Mostly because it's only for really dangerous powers and, of course, combat practice. So here he is, doing some basic ice creation as a 'warm up.' Feel the rimshot.

*

Amara is spending more and more time at the school, putting in time helping with the students and working on her own abilities as well. She hasn't spoken to Scott yet, but it's more and more clear that she intends to stick around here, rather than strike out on her own. So while it might be a surprise to Bobby, it's probably no surprise to anyone else to find her in the observation room for the danger room, flipping on a switch and leaning over to talk to Bobby over the speaker.

"Do you need some extra water in there, Bobby?" she asks.

*

The computers log who uses the Danger Room, of course. And Cal likes to know who, aside from the actual X-Men, decide to use it. Which is why he made a small addition to the programming to send that information to the computer in his suite when it's activated. He happens to be in his rooms when Bobby starts his to practice and decides to go watch, given the potential he suspects exists in the boy. Amara gets a nod when he enters but he doesn't say anything.

*

"Hey there Amara!" Bobby calls out to the speaker, not sure where she is yet. Oh! There she is. He waves.

"Weirdly no. I can do this in the Mojave on the 395 on the way up to Mammoth. I'm told that I crystalize water out of the air but… given how much I seem to be able to make, that seems to not be all of what's going on."

Okay… time to really… try this thing that Cal was doing. He starts out slow, creating small ice ramps and experimentally sliding on them to see how it works.

*

"Hey, Cal," Amara smiles swiftly to Cal when he shows up in the control room, spinning her chair a bit to get a better look at what Bobby's doing. "Why don't you start with exploring some limits before you see what you can use them for?" she suggests over the speaker.

"It sounds like you've mostly been using a lot of finesse and small applications for work. Let's see how much you can make."

*

Cal walks over to take a seat next to Amara. "Hey." He seems content to let Amara make the suggestions for the time being.

*

"How much I can make?" Bobby stops and, grins, walking to the center of the room… "Okay… Here goes…" He's got the image in his head. He's seen it enough on the TV screen or on youtube. That ice castle from Frozen rising out of the ground. Granted, the room is not nearly large enough to hold an actual castle… and Else/Idina Menzel looked a lot better doing it than he's going to, but if one wants to test the scale of what's possible… why not have some fun with it? Slowly he starts to concentrate, trying to form that first platform before pushing it up on those columns.

*

Amara grins despite herself when she starts to recognize Bobby's play, flipping off the speaker to talk to Cal. "He has a good deal of control," she notes, head tilting slightly. "Even though he hasn't practiced this scale, he still uses it with care. It almost reminds me of when I first came here." She pauses. "With fewer earthquakes. Which is for the best."

She eyes Cal for a moment, considering. "He is very powerful where you come from, isn't he?"

*

Cal types on the computer, setting up extra monitors of Bobby's condition. It always does but he wants them displayed to screens and an automatic vocal warning to stop inside the Danger Room if his vitals go haywire. Untrained mutants pushing themselves can be dangerous, especially to themselves. Especially the powerful ones.

"Very. His history seems to be mostly the same here as it was in my reality. Except it happened years later. Maybe something kept his parents from marrying when they should have."

*

Vitals are… stable, but his exertion clearly shows. Bobby has in the past avoided doing anything on this scale because people tend to notice when you create ice castles. Or really, anything bigger than a breadbox. The platform created, Dorian columns of ice begin to push it upward. Okay. He's gonna have to modify the scale of this thing a little if he doesn't want to squish himself on the ceiling. Depending on exactly how well insulated the room is, the cold may be bothering other people, or at least notable to people, even if it doesn't bother him. It may also be visible on the screens that Bobby isn't pushing his power outward so much as he's just stopped holding it in.

*

Amara nods to Cal, glancing to the monitors as well. She's watched her own recordings enough to know how they look, and enough to see points of similarity and difference. "No rush, Bobby," she adds through the speaker. "Just, ah. You know. Let it go." She flips the speaker again before more than the beginning of her laugh can be heard, though she's watching closely.

"I think that I would have a very hard time keeping everything straight if I were you, Cal," she admits.

*

"I had lots of practice." Cal notes idly, paying more attention to Bobby and the monitors than the conversation. "I've lost track of the number of realities I've been in. Some were truly bizarre." Or horrible.

*

It's pretty clear Bobby could use some practice with this kind of thing. The shape of the castle he's trying to create is very complex and the more ice he creates, the less refined it is. Still, there's no denying there's an awful lot of it in there and it's only growing as he concentrates on completing the shape, making the castle rise out of the floor as it did in the movie. At some point he vanishes from sight within the icy miniature halls, if not from the omnipresent monitors.

*

"Occasional visits to Limbo are enough for me to keep straight," Amara shakes her head, resting her chin on one hand as she watches Bobby below.

"That is a prodigious amount of ice," she observes, then breaks into a faint, slow smile. "I should not test his reaction time just yet, should I?"

*

At that, Cal glances over and gives Amara a grin. "Hmm, not yet no. But it does give me a thought." He makes a quick alternation to the Danger Room and the floor starts heating up. Soon enough, it'll start melting the ice on it and they'll see how Bobby handles that. After a moment, he changes the temperature between spots on the floor so it'll begin to list to the side.

*

So this is actually going pretty we- hey, it's getting slippery in here… aaaaand the floor's tilting. That's… not nice. Okay okay, time to adjust. It takes a moment for Bobby to start adding more ice to one side than he is to the other. The miniature castle tilts back to level… and then goes in the other direction. Too much! There's a muted thud as Bobby hits a wall inside the structure, which is enough to momentarily break his concentration. The whole thing sinks about a foot before the ice nerd gets a handle on it.

"Verrrrrry funny." He says, though he's clearly laughing as he says it.

*

"I could have done that," Amara sniffs to Cal's adjustments, though she leans back in her chair, flipping the speaker on again when Bobby hits the wall. "I would like to note, for the record, that that was Cal and the danger room and not me. I was entirely innocent in this scenario."

*

Cal grins at the comment and shuts the heat off. "I know you could have. But sometimes it's more fun to watch. Ware the home - castle - invasion." he warns Bobby and programs a few baby dragons to invade it. "There's three intruders in your castle. Find and immobilize them." They're fire breathing of course.

*

"Dragons?" One gout of fire takes a section of roof off. "Hey! Okay, Cal, now you're just mixing your fairy tales."

Several ice-javelins form near Bobby… which is cute until one realizes that this Bobby has been in track and field. One javelin arcs up. Miss. Another one. Miss. The bearded ice nerd growls in frustration and follows up with a discus.

Squick!

*

Amara leans forward to tap a few more controls, grinning. Now it isn't just the floor that's shifting temperatures. The temperature of the room itself fluctuates from searing heat to frigid cold, partially melting only to refreeze…slicker.

Cal grins and sits back in his chair, motioning Amara to continue torturing him. Though he does make an addition himself. Not only them but Bobby can hear Frosty the Snowman start playing.

*

Okay. Now they're just trolling him. These are his kinds of people. Bobby pushes a platform of ice above the melting and refreezing castle, one that actually locks his feet in, and begins trying to freeze the 'dragons' wings and make them drop from the sky. It does occur to him to wonder exactly how these things are made, and how the temperature in here can be controlled so precisely.

"So what's this training for? We going to fight in Missouri? Motto there is, Don't like weather? Wait five minutes, it'll change."

*

"Mostly, I enjoy passing along past frustrations in the danger room," Amara admits to Bobby's question. "Though I cannot speak for Cal. Also, I'm watching your numbers," she adds more academically.

"Despite the massive exertion of creating a quantity of ice, and the effort of maintaining it, you're still able to manage fine manipulations to counter the other dangers. It's quite impressive, actually."

*

"Oh, is this training?" Cal asks innocently. "I thought we were just tormenting you because it's fun." He alters things again so that the dragon's momentum makes sure it lands next to Bobby and then smacks him with its tail hard enough to knock his leg out from under him. "Why aren't you armored up? See what happens when you ignore that? Go with solid ice; the snowman look doesn't suit you."

*

"I think I'm honored…" Bobby says as he keeps trying to down those dang slippery little reptiles.

"It's really less impressive than all that. I have to concentrate to shape the ice, but making it is easy. I just stop concentrating on not making it. I dunno if I mentioned to you, Amara, but I have to concentrate on holding my power in, rather than concentrating on making use of it. Does that make se-eeense!"

The disk slips and there's a tense moment before Bobby can extend some ice from the walls to stabilize it.

"Ow! Armored up? Oh yeah, when you covered yourself in ice. How the heck did you do that?"

*

"Perfect sense, actually," Amara answers Bobby, typing in a note when the disk slips. "There is a reason you will rarely see me lose my temper. Now."

*

"You'll figure it out." Cal answers oh so helpfully. Not that he can really describe it as if it was something as simple as hammering a nail.

*

One dragon gets a very sharp ice shard to the face when it comes in to tail slap him again. "Booyah!" Bobby grins moments before the other dragon still up tail slaps him. "Ow!" More ice follows it around the room, which is starting to look like Jack Frost and Santa Clause got into a fight… while drunk.

"So is this how training usually goes or is this just the initiation ritual?"

*

"More initiation," Amara chuckles at Bobby's question. "Actual training usually involves a more immersive simulation, and is generally programmed to test you on the levels where you usually fail. If Cal wasn't already here, I might be watching the door to make certain no responsible parties wandered in on this," she admits. "Also, we often practice as teams, to get used to working together. So that we can trust each other."

*

"Plus everyone's training is different and customized to the person." Cal adds. "After all, what Amara needs to learn isn't necessarily what you need to learn." And who better to know that than someone who can have the same abilities? He hits a key and the lights go out in the Danger Room. Utter blackness. But at the same time, the room stops heating up randomly and maintains a steady temperature. A clue for Bobby if he can figure it out.

*

Bobby has, thankfully, had to use his thermal vision a few times in the past. The sudden darkness throws him enough to get tail-slapped again but then he's got the little scaly jerk and settles for just freezing him solid. Ice cube dragon for the win.

"That's fair, I suppose. Though I'm not really 'on the team' so having a teammate is kind of not a thing at the moment. Still, it's good to be able to stretch my legs a bit."

With the ice no longer melting and no one trying to hit him, Bobby begins to reshape the half melted castle with an impish grin. Cal can see what it is, if he uses Bobby's powers, though Amara… probably can't. Which is kind of the point since it's turning into a heroically sized and posed statue of her. One that you might see lining the forum in Nova Roma, for example. Ah yes, he does have a sense of humor.

*

Amara isn't aware of the thermal vision, arching a brow slightly at Cal when he hits the lights. All of the monitoring seems to be all right, though, so there's no need to worry too much.

"On the team formally or not, it is good to know what you can do, and what others can do. Though I am starting to get curious what you are doing in the dark," she admits.

*

"Good, you know you can sense heat." Cal was indeed testing to see if Bobby could… see. And once it becomes obvious he can, the lights are turned back on. Which gets a chuckle since he didn't mimic the boy's powers.

"Lends a whole new meaning to the word statuesque.

*

Bobby is, indeed, standing at the foot of an eight foot statue of Amara very tastefully and heroically posed, his arms folded, smirking just a bit. "I was gonna say something cute, but I guess you know now." He says, blinking as the lights come on, a pearlescent quality from his eyes vanishing as he stops using his heat vision.

"So… were you both just watching that, or does that room have fancy gadgets that tell you all about what I've been doing? I'm guessing the latter since Amara mentioned numbers?"

*

Amara blinks at the statue, quiet for a few moments. "That is…an interesting choice, Bobby," she finally says, clearing her throat and sitting up a little straighter.

"The danger room is set up to track performance and vital statistics, yes," she answers his question. "And sessions are recorded, of course. So you could, conceivably, go back and repeat this session, to improve on your mistakes. Assuming you had made any you deemed costly."

*

"We don't like having students hurting themselves." Cal adds. "So we monitor your health and stop things if anything looks unusual."

*

Bobby laughs a bit at Amara's reaction. "Sorry Amara, didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. Yeah, I can think of a few thinks I might do differently though… I get the impression that there are perhaps other scenarios that might be more instructive."

"Ah yes, medical concerns. That seems pretty sensible. Like if I… turned into a block of solid ice for some reason."

*

"No, it's…" Amara pauses. "Well, it is a bit odd, but mostly because it's so very…good." She tilts her head, eyeing the statue.

"In a few moments, you made a passable likeness. From ice." Leaning back in her chair, she turns back toward Cal.

"I begin to understand why everyone was so awkward when I first arrived."

*

"Everyone's powers are unusual." Cal points out. "Just because we each have our own, doesn't mean we regard someone else's as boring. And you're not ready to turn into a block of ice so don't try." he cautions Bobby.

"You might get stuck. I wonder if Nancy would fix that?" Or make the matter worse.

*

"I'll keep that in mind." That statue isn't going away unless someone melts it. Which is of course, why it's in the room. Bobby may be a prankster, but he's not gonna embarrass someone by putting a statue of them like that in, say, the arboretum. Though he might laugh while he thought it.

"Don't turn into… uh… I'll… keep that in mind…"

Bobby tails off for a moment before shaking himself out of that mental image. "Uh, well it's not that hard, Amara. I shape the ice mentally, so all I really needed was to have a good idea what you looked like."

*

"You would be very useful to a police sketch artist," Amara says with some amusement, voice trailing off as she moves away from the speaker to come down to the danger room herself. She eyes the water and ice on the floor for a moment, then goes molten to move through it, turning most of it to steam as she goes.

"I have control over earth and magma," she muses as she approaches the statue. "But I don't think I could make a similar statue from stone."

*

"Have fun, kids. I'm out of here." Cal shuts down the danger room program so it reverts to its neutral state and then *BLINK*

*

Bobby chuckles and shrugs. "To be honest, Amara…" He says, following her gaze up to the statue. "That sounds a lot more useful to me under most circumstances." Another pause and his eyes narrow ever so slightly… "And I don't think I got your chin quite right."

*

"Be well, Cal," Amara calls back to the control room, raising a hand toward the windows before looking back to the statue. "To be fair," she says thoughtfully, "I have never tried to form stone to such a careful degree." She pauses. "Or to make diamonds. There is a part of me that thinks it would be unethical to make diamonds for the purpose of having money, but then another part of me reminds me of the conditions under which most diamonds are mined, and the issue becomes unclear."

*

"I think perhaps you should think that diamonds are worth far less than most other gems." Bobby chuckles. "Though if you control earth, could you not really efficiently sort for naturally occurring gems, if it ever came down to needing some for whatever reason? Or for that matter, pulling the minerals from the magma itself, since that's where a great many of them come from?"

Geology wasn't ever Bobby's strong suit but he does know a few things.

*

"I have no idea," Amara admits. "I have never really tried." She looks over with a small smile, more of a suggestion in her current state, before walking a bit of a circle to evaporate some of the ice. Pausing halfway through, she looks back to Bobby. "Can you make the ice return to vapor in the air?" she asks curiously. "Or is it stuck here once you've drawn it out?"

"I can reshape it to snow." Bobby says, nodding to some of it piled about them. "But not evaporate it. Like I was mentioning earlier, I'm pretty sure I'm not just pulling vapor from the air… if only because there isn't enough vapor for miles around to make this." He says gesturing at the statue. It's physics nerd talk, but he doesn't go too far into detail.

"You seem to be pretty good at it though." He says with a grin. "Honestly though, that's part of the reason I've never tried large scale creations before."

*

"There is nothing fancy about how I'm getting rid of it," Amara points out with a laugh. "I am applying a high degree of heat, which is vaporizing it. It's going to get very humid in here, though," she cautions. "Luckily, there are drains," she points out a few, "So most will run off. But the rest I can take care of, at least. If you're not pulling moisture from the air, where is it coming from, then?" she asks, glancing back to Bobby. "You would have to be pulling oxygen and hydrogen directly out of your surroundings and reforming them at a massive rate."

*

Bobby nods. "Either that or somehow converting energy directly into water. I've observed talking with Nancy and Jacky before that our powers don't really seem to obey all the rules of physics as we understand them. You, at least, get hungry after you use your powers, so that's an indication that you provide at least some of your own energy… though possibly not all of it."

His look gets sheepish. "Which is why I was staring that one night. Sorry about that."

*

"I get hungry after exercise in general," Amara grins, powering down once most of the standing water is taken care of. Thanks to the new humidity, though, her hair quickly springs into curls. "I've not seen a significant increase in energy needs from using my powers, though. When I-" She pauses, looking around the room. "Soon after I came into my powers, I had a very difficult time controlling them. Or rather, controlling them in relation to my own emotions. When I was upset, I couldn't help it. The ground shook. Fissures opened. Things caught fire. Magma burst through the earth's crust."

*

At that Bobby nods, his voice a tad bit subdued when he answers. "Yeah. I had a similar… reaction. I was scared, I lashed out without even meaning to. My first time I almost encased someone's head in ice. Nearly killed them. Even after I had a hard time not just freezing everything for yards around when I got frightened or upset. And that was after I'd had eight weeks of control training here." Luckily he made it without further incident but he had some really close calls.

*

"That was why I came here," Amara says with a rueful smile. "I didn't want to leave home at first, but my father said it was important that I learn to control it. There were a great deal of adjustments to be made in a short period of time. My powers. My friends here. This whole place. Technology. Thankfully, I do not have trouble with it any more, unless something truly drastic has happened."

*

"Drastic like Nova Roma's sovereignty being challenged?" That had seemed pretty drastic. Sure it was just one tank, two helicopters and forty guys, but the fact of the matter is it would have worked if Amara hadn't have happened to pick that weekend to visit home. Which is a sobering thought no matter how you slice it.

"Though even then, I have to say you seemed pretty under control. More than I would have been certainly."

*

"I have to be, Bobby." Amara twists her hair over one shoulder, trying to tame some of the curl. "Not being under control in that sort of situation results in earthquakes and volcanos, otherwise. Besides, there was a team and a half of us," she adds with a small smile. "Those poor fools didn't stand a chance."

*

"Well they certainly seemed to have left their boy scout manuals at home, if y'know what I mean." Bobby chuckles dryly. "But I think I can understand. Your talent could be a lot more destructive than mine if you didn't keep a tight reign on it." Which is at least at the moment very, very true.

"Though I still say it's more useful in a lot of circumstances. Cooling things off is, as it turns out, a very narrow field, people being built for warmth."

*

"Nonsense," Amara shakes her head. "You create, Bobby. That is never useless. My talents, on the other hand, lean much more toward destruction. When that purse snatcher ran by, for example. You were able to slip him. Relatively unharmed. My options were…less gentle. Even if I'd only shaken the ground beneath his feet, it would have cracked the sidewalk, possibly damaged the street or the foundations of nearby buildings."

*

At this point Bobby just laughs because it's clear to him that they're approaching the thought from different angles. Which shouldn't be surprising to him as they are fire and ice. "I think it's a matter of perspective. It's possible we're both right. You're right, my options in a fight can be less than lethal, but Amara, I'd like you to consider for a moment that you can create 'power.' Heat, lava, motion of one thing to another, all of that is the basis of living or live giving things. I'd really be curious to know what you could do if set loose in a geo-thermal power station."

The physicist shakes his head and grins. "But that's neither here nor there, I suppose. Bit far afield from learning to use my powers in a team context."

*

"I might accomplish things," Amara muses at the idea of a power plant. "Though I am unwilling to trust that no one would think to make it a permanent arrangement." She tilts her head, considering Bobby for a long moment. "What is it you are hoping to accomplish here, Bobby? You seem content with your life, with your work, with your control over your abilities."

*

"I might be if… things were different. But… well, do you remember what we talked about after we stopped that mugger? About how things are in motion and our relationship with the world around us is going to be defined by our action or inaction?" Bobby's had a lot of chances to think about this recently, especially with his contact with Nancy's friends and their upcoming raid on the Hydra facility.

"I'm here to help. However I can. If that's by being Hank's TA, then that's what I can do. If I can help… more actively… then I'll do that too. I don't want to wake up in a world twenty years from now and wish I'd done more with myself than study superconductors."

*

Amara smiles faintly at that explanation, nodding once. There's something approving about the gesture. "I'm leaning more and more that way myself," she admits, reaching her hands above her head for a stretch. "Which is why it's time for me to practice," she says with a grin. "You're welcome to stay if you like, but I've put in a higher-level program to push myself. I make no promises about what may happen in here."

*

Bobby shrugs and goes to get a drink of water from the bottle that is still, thankfully, sequestered in the corner. "Nancy already regularly disabuses me of the notion that I am in any way macho or manly, so I've little ego left to bruise." A smirk forms on his face, playful. "Bring it."


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