06 / 20 / 09 - Bahir, Harrison
Given a few days to settle, get through paperwork, and complete other testing, it is not until late Saturday afternoon that Harrison is asked to come join Bahir in the labs for playtime. With a bright afternoon fading into a lovely evening, the air even on the first floor, above ground, seems stale. There are no birds chirping, and no fresh breezes. There is only a faint, anti-septic tang and the soft hush of recycled air. This particular demo lab is rather large, and rather /empty/, except for a dummy set up at the far end with leads trailing off of it. Bahir is not present. He is late.
Apparently five years in the military is long enough to make someone perpetually on time (and probably convert a night owl into a morning person). Harrison's a bit confused when he finds the lab empty, and ends up double-checking outside the door to make sure he's in the right place. After reassuring himself, he finds a corner, stuffs his hands in his pockets, and stands. Stupid late people.
Bahir reappears in fairly short order with a plastic bottle wedged in the curve of his elbow and a red bag of Skittles in his hand. Tearing off the corner as he slides in, he halts with a blank look at Harrison. He moves quickly past the momentary surprise to complete the motion and slide the corner into the pocket of his jeans. He shakes out a few bits of candy, and then offers the bag. See? He is so polite. He shares! "So, how accurate are you with the whole zapping thing? How much can you blow out?" Other people would say 'hi'.
It's okay. Lack of polite doesn't seem to bother Harrison, because he holds out his hand for some Skittles. Yay candy! "Pretty accurate." He shrugs, tossing the candy into his mouth. "About as accurate as I am with a gun." Which is probably also "pretty accurate." "I've never tested my limits."
"Then how do you know you are pretty accurate?" Whether Bahir's tone is obnoxious or dry depends on your point of view: he would call it dry, perhaps even sardonic. Wrapping the bag of candy over itself once he's shared a generous shake, he begins popping the candies one by one, and speaks between crunches. "Floor's marked by tens. Start close, go for the bullseye. Accuracy over strength, please. Best two out of three, go back until you can't reliably hit."
"Because I've tried out my accuracy," Harrison replies, unaffected whether the tone be obnoxious or dry, "just not how long I can go for." Bit of a difference there. Maybe if Bahir were smarter he would have picked up on that. He steps towards the dummy settling himself at the first line. He lifts his right arm, fingers pointing loosely in the direction of the bullseye, and a small crackle of electricity shoots from his fingers to the bullseye. It's a fairly easy shot. He shoots off two more shots quickly, both landing, and steps back to the next line.
Bahir is a supergenius. Maybe Harrison just didn't pick up on his SUBTLE and DRY SUPERWIT. "What kind of conditions adversely affect your accuracy?" he asks, going to find an abandoned notebook and getting out a pen to scribble. With Harrison throwing around lightning bolts, Bahir's laptop has made a strategic retreat.
Just wait. That laptop and Harrison have a date someday. "Good question," Harrison says thoughtfully, firing off another landing shot. "I've only tried it under good conditions. Though I'd assume that if my concentration were off for some reason." These shots require some concentration, and he takes a moment to get two more bullseyes before speaking again. "I've never tried it in crazy weather or anything like that."
"How do you aim things?" he asks again, once Harrison has finished the trio of shots. "Do you line things up in the same way that you would fire a gun, namely, visually -- or," Bahir says, and pauses in a self-satisfied 'I am a genius' kind of way, "--do you find your target some other way? Have you ever tried to find and aim at a target using electrolocation?"
Harrison settles at the thirty meter line, but faces Bahir for the moment, considering the questions. "Lining things up is easiest. Using my hands just makes it easier to focus." He pauses at Bahir's fancy word for what he thinks of as 'I kind've got a sense for what's around me.' "Is that the jargon you guys have pulled out for this?" Brown strands shift between his fingers as he rakes his hand through his hair. "I guess it's possible that it helps. That whole thing, though...it's mostly involuntary. Just kind've happens."
"We'll try it blindfolded, then, next." Arms folded over his chest, Bahir leans back with the notebook resting on the counter, alongside his bottle of iced tea. "See if it is possible, and if so, how well you do. It might be a skill you can train. It would be nice if you could hit a target that someone who had to rely on their sight wouldn't even be able to see."
There's a quick skeptical look, a general unease with the powers rearing its head a bit. But Harrison buckles down, concentrating a bit more on the next shot. It grazes the edge of the bullseye, but it still hits. He frowns, trying it again with more accuracy. The third hits similarly. Harrison doesn't offer any comments on his progress, simply taking more steps back to forty meters.
That glance, combined with the near-tangible sense of unease that fuzzes at the edge of Bahir's shields, prompts him to arch an eyebrow at Harrison, pen over paper. He waits until he is moving back to the forty mark and then asks, "What?"
The idea that he's that readable by Bahir is unsettling. Harrison doesn't look over, concentrating too much on lining up a shot. He also tentatively tries actively adjusting the invisible field around him, seeing if it can help at all. "I'm just not used to using them," he says simply. Electricity dances from his fingers to the dummy, clearly hitting outside of the bullseye, but still quite close on the target.
Bahir doesn't immediately answer beyond a dry (obnoxious? snide?), "Well, what'd you expect from mutant secret agents?" He lets Harrison focus, speaking up again after the shot cracks just off target. "Even if you never use them, it's good to have your mutation entirely under your control. You wouldn't run around with a gun grafted to your arm and no idea how to use one, right?"
"Nothing different. It's just new." Harrison's not defensive, his tone instead falling into the matter-of-fact category. "No, I wouldn't." There's the smallest hint of amusement in that response. The next bolt he fires is smaller, tighter, somehow, and regains the bullseye. Take /that/, stupid dummy. After a similar amount of concentration, the third is similarly successful.
"Your accuracy isn't bad," Bahir admits. His tone shifts more normal, without a hint of dry about it. There is not much room left for Harrison to zap things. The room is only so long, large as it is. "Why don't you describe to me your sensitivity when you, ah, sense things? Then we can test it out." On Kitty.
Harrison doesn't respond to the semi-compliment farther than a nod, and he stuffs his hand into the front pockets of his jeans when it seems evident that this part of the test is over. "Well, usually--when I'm not futzing with it--I can get an idea at maybe about...Jesus, I don't know. Ten feet? Maybe farther?" He sets himself up a few feet farther than that away from Bahir, closing his eyes momentarily and taking slow steps forward til he's about twelve feet away. He opens his eyes, nodding. "Got you there."
"Can you tell where my cellphone is on me?" Bahir asks. (He isn't carrying one, and neither does he have a watch. In fact, he seems pretty free of all forms of electronic devices.)
There's a look of mild concentration as Harrison attempts to focus the field, brow furrowing as he can't seem to locate what Bahir has asked for. There's another moment as he makes sure. "I don't think you have one."
Reverting to type, Bahir's voice is light as he says, "Oh, so I don't." He crosses the room over toward the dummy and gestures Harrison over as he turns the poor thing around. On the back side, the material of the dummy has been hacked and slashed so that wires can be laid into it. Rather than circles, they are laid straight, progressively more widely spaced moving from right to left. "I want to see how fine the resolution of your sensitivity is, and whether you can sense things better if they are stronger, or if it is simply distant-dependent." This is what he does all day: cuts up dummies and glue wire into the holes.
Harrison understands that. Mostly. He follows Bahir to the dummy, eyeing the wires with a curious expression. "Okay." His gaze traces the wires carefully.
The wires all lead down to one main wire which skips along over toward the wall, where there is a power meter along the way to the outlet. It is not a very fancy set up, and it currently is not plugged in. Leaving Harrison by the dummy, Bahir heads for the wall. "Face the other way and then tell me how many wires there are. Can you sense them without any power running through them?"
Harrison turns as instructed, hands still in his pockets. There's a moment before he shakes his head. "I can get the wires on the floor. They get lost in the dummy, though."
Power dialed down quite low, Bahir plugs it in. Electricity hums along the wires to terminate in a cheap LED glow that barely brightens Harrison's back in the lab's already bright lighting. The wires are spaced thus: twenty centimeters, ten, five, etc, down to the point where there is just the barest space between the two wires on the far side. We'll say there are about ... eight total. "How many do you count?"
The electricity lights up in Harrison's mind; at this range the path of power is clear, even at low energy. "Eight," he says swiftly. "It's easy to follow this close."
"Head out until you have trouble distinguishing them?" Bahir says, going back to retrieve his paper (and his tea, and his skittles) from where he left them at the far end of the room. "Then I'll come back and dial up the power, see if it is any easier."
Harrison takes several steps forward. He passes eleven feet, getting past twelve before he stops. Takes a step back, hovering in between the two. "It gets fuzzy right here, then drops off altogether here." Another step forward, past the twelve foot mark.
Taking his sweet time on the way back with his candy in hand and his paper under his arm, Bahir pauses on his way to make a second offer to Harrison -- MORE candy? -- before going to kick the electricity UP A NOTCH. "Any better?" he asks.
Standing in that little fuzz zone, as we shall call it, Harrison tries. "Just brighter. But still fuzzy." He takes a step forward past his previous end zone. "Still drops off at the same spot."
"Huh." Bahir scribbles a note, and then yanks the plug. Rising, he leans against the counter over his paper, making another few notations. "How long can you go, when you're feeling things? Do you do it all the time, or is it something you can consciously do?"
"All the time," Harrison answers, feeling the pulse of electricity disappear in his head and turning back to face Bahir. "It's unconscious."
Bahir grunts, looking back over his shoulder at Harrison with a narrowed, speculative gaze. "What about when you're -- what do you call it? Zapping things? Do you have a word for it? Any idea how long you can go? What happens when you reach your limit?"
"It's as good a phrase as any." One corner of Harrison's mouth twitches up in a dry smirk. "But no, I don't know. I've never tried to see how long I last."
Bahir smiles. "Oh, good. Something you can work on." If Harrison should feel a faint chill and have a sudden vision of weeks spend dragging to sleep on the bleeding edge of fatigue -- it would totally be understandable. Bahir turns a page and writes out a prescription! "I want you to work on finding the limits of what kind of energy you can put out in a day, and whether you recover easily with sleep, or something else. I've known mutants who recovered faster after an intake of glucose, others who popped B vitamins, and some who just ate a lot of peanut butter. You can try all those."
"Sounds fun." Is that a hint of dryness in his voice? Perhaps. "So you want actual power readings? Cause I can give you times, but it'd all depend on how much juice I'm putting into it. And I wouldn't know how to measure that."
"Yeah. I'll set you up with a lab and some manuals," Bahir says, a little careless as he waves airy assurance. "You can figure out how stuff works. If you melt anything, you can usually find me in the analysis lab. If you set anything on fire, there's a fire extinguisher in each lab." Getting excited, Harrison?!
Oh, he is /tots/ excited! "Mmmm," is the only offered response. "I'll do my best not to damage anything." Harrison's voice sounds pretty sincere. (PS except for Bahir's laptop.)
(PS that is NOT IN THE DEAL.) "Don't worry about it too much," Bahir says, happily charging all damages to the US government. "We can just replace stuff."
"I imagine so." Harrison has too firm a stance to shift his weight, but it almost feels like he's doing that mentally. "Is that all for now, then?"
Bahir scratches a few more lines on the page. "I'd also like to know the maximum you can output in a single blast and the minimum, so experiment with that, takes notes. If you have trouble finding equipment that can withstand a full blast, let me know. We'll figure something out." He straightens, ripping the paper off the bad and turning to cross over to Harrison. He taps his pen on his jaw, frowning as he goes back through his points. "Any points of your mutation that you are unfamiliar with? Anything you would like help refining or learning to control?"
The instructions get a nod of acknowledgment, the questions a pause for mulling over. "Powering things is the trickiest. Getting the right amount of power without frying something. It can take me a few minutes to find it, starting small and working my way up. Might be useful for me to be able to do it faster."
"All right. Put in a request for appropriately sized devices and you'll get them," Bahir promises, passing over the paper of exercises. Homework! "You should consider this as much a priority as your other training. Why get together a group of mutants if they don't know how to use their mutations to the fullest?" Half a smile on his lips, he retreats back to gather up his things once the paper is passed off. "Let me know how it goes, eh?"
Harrison takes the offered paper and scans it quickly. Homework. Yay. "I understand. You need me in top form." Despite the inevitable suckiness of the training, it's a sentiment Harrison can get behind. "I will," he assures Bahir, offering his hand. "Thanks."
Hand met, Bahir adds, "And if you have time to sleep, might as well try to get some." Clasp firm, grin quick, he says, "You're welcome," and then leaves. With /pity/ in his eyes. (Haha. Sleep. Yeah right.)
Great. Harrison's grip is firm in return. "Right. I'll look into that." He seems well-aware that he's in for some shitty weeks.
DRILL SERGEANT BAHIR.