ax_main | Tommy and Terry

Both remedial students welcome a break from boring maths to show off their powers.

Tessa might be helping Terry with her summer classes, but she wasn't going to do her homework for her (sadly; Terry wouldn't have been against it). And today, she'd chosen to do her homework in the library, to be certain that her thoughts would be her own. She didn't need Tessa to know the extent to which she struggled with trig.

It was a pretty horrible extent.

Given that shadow, the height of the building should be... Ugh. She sucked at this, and made a small, unhappy sound before twisting her hair behind her shoulders.

/This sucks; can u teleport us to Carnivale?/ Tommy fired off the text to Illyana while he was walking through the library, glaring at the phone when it slowly caught up to his typing speed. He shoved the phone in his pocket and slumped bonelessly into a chair at the long library table, only realizing a moment later that someone else was already there. Redhead; new. He’d seen her in class, but that wasn’t exactly an awesome get-to-know-you venue. And she looked about as happy as he was to be there. “Hey,” he greeted her, dropping the stupid math workbook on the table with a thud.

Terry had looked up when another kid had joined her at the table, and recognised him as another of the unlucky few tapped for summer school. She couldn't remember his name, but his hair was a bit difficult to forget. "Hi," she told him, frowning only briefly at the thud of his book - because her first thought was that the librarian was going to shush him.

But this wasn't her old school, and there was no one to protest the noise. She zeroed in on the book and wrinkled her nose in distaste. "I hate math."

“That’s because it’s a godawful waste of time,” Tommy agreed, eyeing the book with disdain. “Or possibly one of the more effective torture systems ever designed. Not to mention useless, since we’ve all got calculators on our phones.” Supposedly there was a reason he’d have to know the quadratic equation at some point in his adult life, but no-one would ever explain to him why.

"And I've no idea why I'd want to reckon the height of a building by the change in its shadow, anyway," Terry finished despondently. None of it made any sense to her.

Tommy nodded in sympathy, sprawling back in his chair and lacing his fingers behind his head. “If you’ve been casing a building long enough to see the shadow change, you’ve been there long enough to count the damn floors.” The logic was sound.

Terry's look switched to a mix of curiosity and wariness. "D'you often case buildings?" Or maybe he'd heard about the failed burglary and somehow figured it out. She was thankful no one seemed to have, or to have connected the dots, or said anything, so far.

Tommy missed whatever her expression might have revealed, busy digging in his bag for the rest of his gear. “Not that anyone’s ever been able to prove.” He did flash her a knowing grin that she could take for a joke, if she wanted to. “I’m Tommy, by the way. Cell number 103.”

The prison joke just hammered it home for Terry, and she couldn't help but think of her uncle. But he didn't sound like he was referencing that after all, so she forced herself to dismiss the frown. "Terry. 203. Reckon I'm your counterpart?" On account of the room numbers.

“That depends.” Tommy dumped half his bag out the table and grabbed the pen he was looking for before it could hit the ground. “If you’re lacking responsible parental figures, have an unsealed criminal record, and a roommate who may as well be an alien for all the resemblance he bears to a rational human being – then welcome aboard the crazy train.”

Terry thought that over for a second, then shrugged. "It's not completely not me." She didn't like to think of her uncle as completely irresponsible, but given recent events... And she was only lacking a criminal record because he had made sure she didn't get caught. She gave Tommy a smile meant to look more confident than she felt about having just admitted that. "And we both hate math."

“Another point in your favour.” He flipped open his book and stared at it. It stared back at him, unblinking. He looked out the wide, clear windows. Outside, the sun was shining and – more importantly – there was no homework. Theoretically he could put on a burst of speed, crank out the homework and still have the rest of the afternoon to goof off. But it would only actually be going fast from everyone else’s perspective. He’d still have to be living through the whole process. Not good enough. “No diploma is worth this,” he grumbled aloud.

"But what else are ye going to do?" Terry replied with a sympathetic shrug. It wasn't like she had any other option, and a high school diploma - Regents Diploma, around here - felt like an obligatory rite of passage.

Besides, it wasn't as if she knew what she wanted to do with her life.

Tommy’s reply was a fairly eloquent shrug of ‘who the hell knows.’ “Anything but this?” Sadly, math homework was a step up from ‘lab rat,’ so he should probably at least be seen to put in a token effort. “Who are you rooming with, anyway?”

"Tessa," Terry replied, twirling a pen in her hand. "She's a telepath." It seemed easier than the 'cyberpath' term Tessa had told her. "And a fair bit odd."

Tommy nodded. “I’ve met her. She’s weird even for this place.”

"Who are you rooming with?" Terry asked in return. Fair was fair.

“Beyond weird and into the Twilight Zone. I’m rooming with this kid named Inu-Yasha. He growls at everyone and swears he’s some kind of dog-demon. He’s working through some things,” Tommy finished dryly.

"...wow," Terry replied, very eloquently. That sounded like quite a few shades of fucked up. "What's a dog-demon, anyway?"

“Beats me. He’s got claws and stuff, though, so I assume it’s got something to do with his mutation. What’s yours?” he changed subjects, Inu-Yasha much less interesting a topic. “If it’s more wings, give a guy some warning before you haul them out. Shen almost took my head off last week,” he exaggerated, miming the dive-bomb trajectory with one hand.

Terry let out an unrestrained peal of laughter, forgetting to be wary of anything for the first time in their conversation. "Really? The Chinese girl?"

“Oh yeah,” Tommy leaned back in his chair, warming to the story. “She was practicing landings and came in low. Pow -- right into me. It’s a war zone out there sometimes,” he joked easily.

"I didn't realise it was quite this dangerous here," Terry admitted, laughter still shining bright in her eyes. He was obviously fine, so it couldn't have been that bad.

“Come on,” Tommy snorted, his grin wide. “Grab a bunch of teenagers with powers, stick them all together in a training camp with less than 24-7 adult supervision? What else could possibly happen?”

"That's a good point," Terry agreed after a beat. Then bit down on her lip, leaning forward on the table. "So what's yours? Your power?"

Tommy shook his head. “Nuh-uh. I asked you first.”

Ah, that was true. "It's sonic," she answered, lips twisting slightly. "I can modulate my vocal cords, and do all sorts of weird things with sound." Being vague was her strategy, when talking about her power. It wasn't as if she understood it well, and some of the applications for it... Better remain vague.

Sound was interesting. There was all kinds of potential there, depending on what ‘weird things’ meant. Mind you, given how little he really knew about the extent of his own powers, and the kinds of things he’d seen in the last couple of weeks alone, that potential was probably going to end up as something pants-shittingly terrifying eventually. “Not bad,” was all he said aloud, nodding his head. “You must be popular at karaoke night.”

"I was, but - I don't really know when it started kicking in," Terry replied with a small shrug. And she certainly hadn't gone karaoke since she knew for certain that it had. She leaned forward again, curiosity shining in her eyes. "So. What's yours?"

“Me?” Tommy pushed with his powers and the world slowed to a stop. He snagged Terry’s pen out of her hand and leaned back in his chair again. Then he let everything go back to normal, less than a split-second having passed for anyone else. “I’m fast.” He waggled her pen at her.

Terry's mouth hung open for a few seconds, and then she broke into a smile. "Class!" It was a good thing there was no one monitoring the noise level in the library, and that they were the only ones in it; that hadn't been discreet at all. "That's brilliant!"

Now that was a much better response than some. "That's nothing," Tommy preened. "I've broken the sound barrier before." Okay, so it had been once when he was going flat-out, and he'd had the headache from hell afterward, but it still counted.

"Really?" Terry asked with raised eyebrows, and a bright smile. "I can't believe it." Manner of speaking, obviously; she simply thought it was fierce.

Tommy arched an eyebrow, the cocky smile never slipping. "Are you doubting my skills?"

She hadn't been, but now Terry's eyes glinted with a challenge as she answered, "What if I am?" Breaking the sound barrier. How grand!

Tommy dropped her pen onto the table and spun it back in her direction, only adding a tiny bit of extra oomph into the motion. “Money where your mouth is,” he suggested easily. “Ten bucks says I can rattle this place like a fighter jet doing a flyby.”

"And break all the windows while you're at it?" Terry stopped the pen from spinning and picked it up again, smiling at him. "I don't think ten bucks would cover that."

He shrugged. “That’s a myth. As long as you’re far enough away, you’re fine.” At least that’s what Mythbusters had said. The one time he’d done it he hadn’t actually cared about whether anything was blowing up behind him, or stopped to check.

Terry had been reading up on sound, and she knew for a fact that it wasn't a myth. She could even prove that sonic booms broke glass with one scream. She'd been about to say so when he added his caveat, and okay, that she agreed with. As long as he knew to stay far enough away... "You're on," she stated with a grin. Sure, she didn't have much money, but it would be ten dollars well spent.

The familiar thrill ran through him at that; the chance to cut loose and really push his limits, see what he could do – and the edge of terror that he refused to acknowledge or name. “Name the day,” he said, to stop himself from thinking about things.

"You'd rather be doing math?" she asked, more surprised than goading. She'd honestly thought he would do it right then, with the 'money where your mouth is' yoke.

“Not in the least.” Tommy glanced out the window once more, the outside air pulling him into making another stupid and impulsive decision. Excellent. He assumed an air of mock innocence. “I’m doing my best not to be a bad influence on other students,” he finished solemnly.

"I'm fairly certain I'm the one goading you on," Terry pointed out with a proud little smile. She did like a little bit of trouble, and this was harmless! As long as he was far enough away, and the grounds were certainly big enough for that.

That got a real smile breaking out across his face. “You’re gonna have to start sitting with the rest of the delinquents at dinner,” he teased, shoving his books and junk further back on the table and standing.

Uncertainty niggled at the back of his brain for a second – could he do it again? He was in shorts and a t-shirt, thankfully, not jeans – not super aerodynamic, but not anything that would cause a problem. (A few weeks gone by and the scarring on his arms had faded enough that he’d been more comfortable wearing short sleeves, even as the pink marks served as a reminder that he still barely knew anything about the far edges of his powers.)

But Terry was smiling at him, and she’d called his powers ‘brilliant,’ so fuck it. Money where his big mouth was. “Coming?”

"You say that like it's a bad thing," she pointed out as she gathered her things to put them away in her bag and follow. There was so much more freedom here than there had been at her previous boarding school, and she intended to make the most of it.

“It’s all in the perspective.” He led the way down one of the side stairs, trying to decide where on the grounds would be best. He needed a long enough run without obstacles, far enough away that he wouldn’t end up in shit for knocking the Professor’s favourite paintings off the wall or something. “So where are you in from?” He was tempted to guess – UK somewhere, probably – but he’d been wrong with Jeanne-Marie, and didn’t feel like making that mistake again.

"Westport, Ireland," Terry replied, since she wasn't sure whether the Ireland bit was obvious to him or not. She trotted happily down the stairs, looking forward to being outside. Great break from trig, this was.

“That explains the hair.” How far away did they have to be before he imploded anything? A hundred yards or so should do it, a little more if he cared about being on the safe side. Tommy headed that way, stretching his arms up over his head; as if that would actually help him get ready for this. If it burned up energy like last time, he’d be heading straight for the kitchen to stuff his face afterwards. “Your powers are sound, you said.” He turned and walked backward, grinning at her. “How do I know you’re not going to dampen it down to mess with me?”

It was easy to grin back in kind. "Reckon you'll have to trust me, won't you." She wasn't sure she could do her thing against a supersonic boom, but now she was tempted to try.

“Trust is earned, Red.” And he stepped to the side in case she tried to take a swing at him for the nickname. When they were probably far enough away – again, physics, not really his thing – he stopped walking. The field went on for a while; normally it would take him a second, maybe two, to get from there to the end at a normal-for-him high speed. Could he really do it in that much less?

Only one way to find out.

"You know we're not all redheads, right?" she asked him playfully, off his earlier remark.

“Sure,” he grinned. “Same as everyone from Jersey isn’t actually loud and obnoxious – just enough of us to make the stereotype fair.”

Terry shook her head, smiling at his answer, and looked around before turning back to him. "I'm ready to be wowed."

The worry wanted to set in, gnawing at his gut, but he didn’t let it. Fuck that, and fuck the nerves starting to tighten in his stomach. He had this. This was what he did. Tommy grinned wide, stretching his arms above his head and cracking his back and shoulders with appropriate levels of drama. “Then let’s do this thing.”

It wasn’t a race but he dropped into a starting stance anyway, fingertips flat against the short-cropped grass. He took a breath. He stopped time. He ran.

It was tempting to try and isolate the sonic boom, but Terry didn't quite dare it. What if it backfired? Harmed him somehow? She watched him get ready, and when he blurred into action - whoa - she instinctively set up a sonic shield in front of herself - because much as he was far enough from the mansion, what if he wasn't far enough from her.

The telltale boom-BOOM that occurred when he broke the sound barrier was less loud to her for it, but still audible, and she grinned that he hadn't been all talk. She dropped the shield, ready to start clapping once he stopped.

It was almost impossible to tell exactly how fast he was going from inside – the time trials and stopwatch were new tests, numbers all but meaningless when he tried to correlate them to the way using his speed felt. But this had been different.

He’d come up to the wall, felt it stretch around him like the thinning walls of a balloon. He’d pushed against it, head down shoulders forward, never give up and never surrender. And he’d popped through, everything decelerating around him that little bit more, and he’d known.

Not the easiest ten bucks he’d ever made, but not the hardest either. Not by a long shot. Tommy skidded to a halt, another thin layer of rubber shredding off the soles of his shoes. And when he looked back, Terry was at the other end of the field, a small figure against the green.

Terry was clapping and cheering all the way back where he had started, and making no move to head over to him. He could be back beside her in a heartbeat, after all, and she did owe him ten dollars now. She reckoned he would be back.

He took an almost leisurely speed back to her, jogging to a halt a second later. “How’s that for proof?” he grinned wide, sweat actually beading a little on his forehead from the extra exertion.

"Very impressive," Terry grinned at him as she stopped clapping. She dug into her bag for her wallet and held a note out to him. "There you go now."

Tommy took it and made it vanish into his pocket, nodding at her in thanks. “How about you?” he asked, curiosity piqued now. “Not that I mind being the biggest show-off, of course, but seeing a demo would be cool. Or hearing one,” he reconsidered his words. “Since most of us can’t see sound.”

Terry hummed in thought, looking around. "Do you think anyone would miss that old tree?" There was no way she would give him a demo that involved him. "It looks dead, ish."

“If they’re coming out here to count trees at night, then this school’s even more messed up than I thought,” Tommy replied cheerfully. And yet – “why? What has a tree got to do with sound powers?”

"Just - stay where you are," Terry requested, instead of answering his question. He moved so fast, she didn't want to risk him getting caught in the crossfire.

She turned to the old, gnarled tree and, instead of trying to find the right pitch for it, simply directed a blast of sound at it, barely audible for most human ears. She did her best to focus the sound in a line down its length, and was rewarded when the tree creaked and split down the middle. Her Danger Room sessions with Tessa were paying off, and she grinned as she turned to Tommy.

There had been a whine, a high-pitched shriek like after listening to music too loudly, then the tree ... just broke. Sound knives? Whatever the hell it was, “that was very cool,” Tommy said aloud. “And destructive. Nice.”

"It's the easiest thing to demo," Terry stated, glad with his praise. She loved practising.

He cocked his head and considered things, a speculative grin spreading across his face. Once again, he briefly wished Kitty was around for the physics questions, but then again... she could be a bit of a killjoy when it came to the experimenting part. "So I can outrun sound... I wonder if I could outrun your blasts?"

"Probably," Terry confirmed, but she grimaced. "I'd rather not test it in case I'm wrong. Not unless you don't mind being made dizzy when you're at top speed." It was the most benign thing she could do to people, and it didn't exactly sound safe when you were as fast as Tommy was.

"I don't mind particularly, in the name of science and all, but losing my way and running into walls is a lot less fun than it sounds." It was still damned tempting, though. "You know what would be cool," he continued, his eyes lighting up and his grin wide. "Trying to outrun one of those shock waves like you see around explosions in movies. But I'm not sure if that's supposed to be sound waves or not."

"Not so cool if you only try to outrun it," Terry replied with a worried twist of her lips. She'd hurt one person too many with her powers already. "I don't want to harm you."

He nodded, sliding his hands into his pockets and walking the couple of places to her side again. "I'll let you off the hook today, but fair warning -- I'm putting that on my bucket list."

"As long as it isn't the actual last thing you do," Terry replied with a brief grimace, before she brightened up. "As soon as I have good enough control, we can try it."

He nodded cheerfully enough. "Deal. In the meantime-" he glanced around, but their little experiments in sonic booms and exploding flora didn't seem to be attracting too much attention. Yet. "We're probably better off vacating the scene of the crime. In case that was Xavier's favourite dead tree."

Terry glanced back at the now even deader tree, and nodded sheepishly. She stepped back in the direction of the mansion. "Well, now I feel like finishing my trig even less."

"I'd apologize," Tommy fell in easy step beside her, still rushing on a high from the successful run, though admitting that would be like admitting he hadn't been sure he could make it. "But I'm not actually sorry."

"I'm not sorry either," Terry confirmed with a quick smile, one hand curled around the strap of her bag on her shoulder. "That was a welcome break." And Tommy was cool.

"In that case, red, you owe me one." Tommy winked at her, because the day was bright, he wasn't inside doing homework, and for once he didn't actually feel like taking to his heels and raising the dust behind him. He might still leave tomorrow, might get kicked out by the end of the week. But right now, things were kind of looking up.

"You have your ten dollars already," Terry pointed out, grinning at his wink. It was cheesy, like the nickname, but it made her smile instead of annoy her, so she'd give it to him. They worked.

"I'm not talking about money. I mean bad ideas." He grinned back at her. "I'm a big fan of those, especially when they come from other people. It helps with the plausible deniability."

"Well, the dead-er tree is not on you," Terry replied, eyes bright with amusement. "My usual bad ideas I can't actually follow through on for a couple of days." Remy was getting her that fake ID meant to let her buy alcohol, at last.

Tommy laughed, giving her a speculative glance. "You know I'm gonna have to ask, given that lead-in."

"Let's just say it's a lot easier to get yer hands on alcohol when ye're a teenager in Ireland," Terry replied impishly. It was a bad idea in terms of illegality, but to be fair, she didn't think that it was really bad. It was a thing teenagers did.

Nothing new, then, but at least she wasn't going to give him the stink-eye like Kitty had when he'd shown up with the coolers. Tommy shrugged. "It's not hard to get it here if you know who to talk to. There's always someone in town willing to do a booze run in return for a couple of extra bucks. Pot's harder to get your hands on out here in the sticks. I haven't done a lot of asking around yet, mind you."

"I haven't even thought about pot," Terry admitted. Not when she'd found out how difficult it was to get her hands on alcohol to start with. Although that would soon be solved!

"It's not usually my thing. I'm not huge on anything that makes me feel slow," Tommy replied easily. "But sometimes life is easier when it's not going at a million miles an hour. What's happening in a 'couple of days'? You don't look like you're about to turn twenty-one."

"I'm getting fake ID," Terry replied after a faint hesitation. Tommy was the sort of person she could tell that much to, wasn't he?

"That's not a bad idea." She looked old enough that she could probably get away with it, too. Tommy was pretty sure he wasn't quite there yet. Maybe after another growth spurt, but right now he was still pretty easily pegged as a high-school kid. "Then you can do the beer runs instead," he added cheerfully.

"For a couple of extra bucks," she repeated his words with a grin. Honestly, she'd probably do it for free, but teasing felt nice.

"Oof, hoist on my own petard. For whatever a petard is." He laughed, taking it in decent spirits. "I can't exactly complain about that deal."

"Might be I'll just take a percentage off the alcohol," Terry replied with a grin. "We'll see."