Train Me

[Kero]

Morning mist had a way of obscuring things in a way that almost made them more interesting. The camp, as exciting and stunning as it was at first glance by daylight, was softened down at this hour. The rays of the sun were made gentler, spreading over everything and yet not quite touching anything. And in the wooded areas, the air was still nippy, some sides of trees having a bit of frost on them. The previous night had gotten rather cold, and as the boy sat down on top of a large log just outside the GPC, he shivered slightly.

“Geeze, I should have brought something warmer…” muttering to himself, he looked at his gloved hand idly as he leaned back, confident that near no one else would be here this early. It was a weekend. The kids were let off to do things on their own, like in school, and that meant no morning announcements from Coach Oleander. For that, Raz was glad. He really hadn’t slept too much last night; too busy, really. The camp had to be explored and guarded by someone, after all, and as he was awake, it might as well have been him!

Still, the cold had driven him back to the cabins until early in the morning, when he’d woken up and slipped out…. He should have grabbed his Psychonaut sweater… There was always the option of burning things, but Raz figured it wasn't a good idea... besides, it was too obvious, really. Why give away his position so easy?

[Zero]

Meanwhile, up in the trees, the former insane dentist was sleeping, his back rested against the trunk that the thick branch he was sitting on came from. Truthfully, he had gotten up a bit too early this morning (5:00 am to be exact) thanks to the excitement that he'd having a student he'd be teaching today. So, thanks to this, a few minutes of waiting in the trees later, he had effectively dozed off. At the sound of Raz's voice however, he awoke with a start, almost falling off the high branch before effectively gripping the thick branch with his psi-claws and hanging for a few minutes like a possum.

His initial entrance plan ruined, he simply hopped down from the branch and cushioned his feet with a levitation orb upon impact. He went to move a bit of hair that had fallen in front of one of his robotic eyes before looking at Raz. "Glad to see you're on time." He said, trying to hide the fact that he was still a little sleepy.

[Kero]

Maybe Raz didn’t have the lightening fast, super honed senses he thought he did… or maybe he just hadn’t expected anyone but himself to be prone to hanging out in trees. Whatever the reason, when the dentist landed nearby, he jerked to full alert, falling off the log but taking a pose on the ground that looked like he was ready to psy-blast anything that looked threatening… Until, of course, he realized who it was, giving Cali a skeptical glance and moving to get up and dust himself off.

“You were in the tree the whole time? Man, and I thought I’d be able to get here before you…” disappointed, he didn’t let it get him down for long, and excited gleam in his eye, “So you’re gonna teach me how to do that claw-thing, huh?? So how soon should I be able to learn it?” he was certainly thinking ahead, letting his imagination get away with him as he imagined himself already using the move to tear through iron doors and whatnot. No more need to move chairs out of the way of a lock! “I mean, it’s totally cool… How many people know this, anyhow?”

[Zero]

"This ability? I came up with it myself, I don't think anyone else knows." Cali chuckled slightly at Raz's excitement, it kinda showed that even though he was already a Psychonaut at age 11 that he was still in a sense, just a kid. "Anyway, psi-claw takes a lot of focus and energy Raz. It takes a clear head in order to focus your thoughts to be as sharp as knives. Now, calm your focus and we shall begin." Cali sat down cross-legged and took on a look of deep concentration once he closed his eyes.

[Kero]

Calming focus. It was something that seemed so simple, and yet, when asked of an eleven year old boy, one who had a mind that jumped around like a leapfrog on crack, it was fairly impossible to do much focusing when he was too busy wondering how he would use this new power of his. Nonetheless, he did make an attempt to try. Sitting cross-legged on his log, Raz smirked, but he didn’t close his eyes, staring at Cali intently with the bright, eager, busy-tailed way of a person so ready to learn that he wasn’t ready at all to be taught.

Raz knew how to focus, though. The types of focus he needed for all other psychic endeavors were ingrained into his mind, automatic to the point that he could do some of them in his sleep. Which really wasn’t good for nightmares. This, though… this was a little different. And his mind kept wandering, flitting to exciting places in the midst of his efforts.

[Zero]

After a few minutes of zen-like meditation, Cali peeked open an eye to see Raz looking at him. It was obvious that it would be a difficult task for the boy to focus. He sighed to himself before looking at Raz. "Ok, here's what you have to do. You have to imagine your energies right now, as water basically. Then, you imagine that water all focusing on one area on your body, lets say your hand."

He held out his robotic claw, looking at it intently. Energy began to flow around the appendage, swirling and shifting. "Then, you have to imagine the water/energy hardening, or in this case, freezing so to say." The energy then began to slow down, going over the very tips of his claw, forming claws of their own. The energy slowed down more and more, until all together freezing, forming the energy claw over his hand. "Now, you try, but don't put too much of your energy into it."

[Kero]

The first mistake Cali made was in thinking anything in Raz’s mind liked water. The second, of course, was demonstrating it at such.

Raz was not a stupid boy. He knew energy and water had different properties, but he couldn’t help but feel a sobering twitch of unease when his newest teacher (probably unknowingly) used a rather sensitive topic to describe the execution of the newest skill he wished very badly to learn. For an instant, as the claw flowed upwards, he imagined it as the Hand of Galochio. He noticed afterward that he had scrabbled back, half ready to climb a tree from rising water levels that simply weren’t there, finally relaxing just an inch as his imagination was reined in, and he saw the hand as the Psy-claw again.

Still, rubbing a hand over his upper arm, the experience had been a little dampering on his idea of this as fun as he’d thought before, and he narrowed his eyes a little, “Uh… I didn’t do that… Okay, let’s get this thing learned…”

He didn’t really know what to think of the energy of to replace water, though, so he mentally envisioned fire… possibly a bad idea, as his arm soon caught flame. Thankfully, his clothing didn’t burn at his own fire, and he just yelped, batting it out. “Dammit!” Language, Raz!!

[Zero]

Cali blinked at Raz's reaction, the energy the claw was made of quickly flashing away with the loss of concentration. He had prepared to speak when Raz's arm had caught a-flame fallowed by swearing from his student. Was it something he had said? He thought for a few minutes. Hadn't Nein told him something about Raz?

After a few minutes of thought, he gasped to himself. Of course! Raz was afraid of water! Cali honestly felt like an idiot not knowing that and then using that ethic to teach Raz by. He shook of his feeling of idiocy for a moment and gave Raz a stern look. "Now now Raz, don't go getting frustrated about this. Look, maybe my example wasn't exactly the best one to use."

He thought for a few minutes. "Ok, so look here. Psi-Claw is a lot like two abilities you already known: Shielding and Telekinesis. The TK part allows you to form the energy over the part of your body while the Shielding is what allows you to harden it over the body part. The ability also works like those two other abilities. The psi-claw not only is a weapon, but it is also a shield over the limb you use. Now that we've discussed it, try again, but this time, try to remain calm."

[Kero]

Calm.

Somehow, after the horrible mistake of setting fire to his own arm, and the embarrassing fiasco of thinking of the move he was now trying to learn as an invisible hand that only he and his family members could see, Raz’s mind finally got to the point where he could put up a mental sort of shield on his excitement and kid-like glee, focusing on what Cali was telling him. The premise, explained that way, seemed simple enough.

Raz took a deep breath and scratched the back of his neck, trying not to feel down after the rebuke he’d gotten. His other hand, he stared at, summoning up the familiar, hand-like grip of telekinesis… But this time he concentrated on letting the energy wash over his fingers. Now, he was trying not to break his hand, too; that would be unfortunate.

To think of shielding was easy enough, too. His mind almost brought it up on it’s own, flicking the shield into life around the energy. It faltered for a few moments, before solidifying, leaving Raz’s fingers coated in a somewhat patchy, but very sharp, form of energy.

“Whoah…. That is neat…. Look I-!” his face suddenly fell when the break in concentration caused his triumph to poof out of existence, “…..well, I had it…”

[Zero]

Cali was mildly impressed as he watched the energy form on Raz's hand, the sort of orange color that made Raz's energy look similar to the fire that had almost engulfed his arm a few minutes ago. It looked like he had had it in the bag, until speaking, with which the energy shattered like glass. Cali sighed. "Well at least you've gotten the basic concept of it down."

Cali concentrated on his own hand for a moment, the lime-colored energy again returning to it. "Ok, maybe your not ready to put the energy over a whole body part, so we'll start smaller." Cali summoned up a TK hand that quickly grabbed a nearby stone and set the stone in between them. "Now, try solidifying your energies over this rock."

[Kero]

There was something distinctly less cool about using a rock as a prop.

The stone was small, and still wet from morning dew that hadn’t evaporated yet. It would likely never really dry out unless it was moved further out into the open, as the forest was a wet place, and the creek that ran nearby made certain that everything stayed damp and cool. Most of the kids at camp used this area to cool off when the days of summer got too hot to play around out in the open. Raz himself could often be found hanging out around the shallow areas of the swamp, since it was a perfect place to practice without anyone bugging him when he was in the mood.

Though he never really had figured out why that tree with the old car stuck in it had been left there…

Giving Cali a silently skeptical look, the boy moved his hand to brush the hair that stuck out of his cap from his eyes, sitting back cross-legged on the log he had been using as a chair and staring at the little stone with just as much dubiousness.

There had to be a way to make this better…

In an instant, he had it, smirking in triumph as he then resolved to focus more intently on learning this skill, no matter what it took. Cali was right; it required a tremendous amount of thought and constant concentration to be able to shape Telekinesis into anything other than a normal hand shape. But now that Raz had tried and failed, he wanted to try again with a stubborn vengeance, and push the bar even harder. He knew what to do now.

Narrowing his eyes, the rock suddenly shot up, quickly caught by a mental tendril of energy and then settling back down somewhat. With Raz concentrating so hard, the Telekinesis energy was slowly shaped into what looked to be a stalk, growing large petals around the rock that it held as it solidified from the bottom up. The end result was a flower, with the rock as its center, but the petals as sharp as razors. The ‘flower’ swayed slightly, wavering as Raz kept his concentration firm, but had to try and speak, “…..this… is really hard…”

And honestly, if any of the kids at camp found out he had made a flower, he’d never live it down.

[Zero]

Cali had to admit, he was....impressed. It was true that Nein what had said about Raz being a fast learner. "Very nice Raz, you're learning quickly." Cali examined the flower/rock for a few minutes. "Well, obviously you've gotten the idea of what you need to do, but I still don't think you're ready to do the ability over parts of your own body yet. The energy from your body, I think, is sort of messing with the energy that your using around your body. Therefore, I'm going to have you practice solidifying energy over things, that don't have as much psychic energy as your own body does."

Cali looked for something (other then a rock) for Raz to try the technique on next. His eyes finally rested on a fluffy squirrel, happily chewing on a nut a few feet away. Then, Cali's lime green TK hand snatched it up, and dropped the frozen with fear animal between them. "Now, try solidifying your energies against a living thing. Oh, and if you need to speak, do it telekinetically, it's easier to keep your concentration that way." The squirrel between them was still too scarred to move, eyes wide with fear and staring at Raz.

[Kero]

If there was one thing the boy probably would never have thought of, it was that his own psychic energy might have been messing up his ability to use telekinesis near himself. Thinking about it, though, it made sense in that weird way those kinds of psychic things did. He’d always had a bit of trouble concentrating on holding things near himself. Like the one time he’d tried to hold a cup of water above his head like he always saw Sasha do with various food and drinks and his pens, all Raz had gotten was wet for his efforts. He hadn’t really told anyone about that one, though.

So when a squirrel was placed in front of him for him to play with, he didn’t have as much of a reservation about it as the stone. Letting his former creation dissipate, he renewed his concentration on the frozen little mammal, grinning a bit to himself.

<You know, I always wanted to be able to do this…>

It was lucky the squirrel was frozen. It might have been crushed a little otherwise as Raz let his energy flow over it. The entire process seemed easier this time. The boy was more confident that he had this trick right, and the only real limit he had was energy and creativity. Being eleven, he had both things in no short supply. The squirrel got everything he could think of. A ridge of spikes down it’s back, two wings, even little fangs. And since it was his energy manipulating it, he made the squirrel sit up on its hind legs and salute his teacher.

<Is this not the best squirrel ever?>

[Zero]

Cali examined Raz's new creation. It was impressive, but Cali was getting the feeling that Raz was forgetting the point of the ability. Truthfully, Cali had just expected Raz to solidify the energy around the rock and the squirrel, but instead, he had managed to shape the energy of the two objects as his own, he even controlled the squirrel using the TK portion of the ability. The squirrels eyes still darted around in fear and the poor little thing was trying to get out of it's energy prison.

Cali saw the squirrels panic and quickly had Raz's energy snap away so the squirrel could run off into a tree and toss a nearby nut it found at Raz's skull. "Now Raz, we've tried living and non-living objects, now lets start with objects that have psychic energy."

From where he was sitting, he pulled a nearby psitainium arrowhead from the ground and put the arrowhead in the holding compartment in his metal arm. He then proceeded to undo the leather straps that held the arm on beneath his sweater telekinetically, and then set the arm between them.

"Now, you managed to put your energy around the squirrel and make it move. Try the same with my arm now. It's OK if you need to simplify the design to make up for the difficulty if there is any difficulty."

[Kero]

When the energy snapped in two, leaving his creation to dissipate and the squirrel to run off, it was almost like a smack on the wrist to Raz’s mind. Jerking back somewhat, he shook his head quickly once, trying to dispel the odd sensation of a mental lashback. He couldn’t help but feel there was something wrong with what he was doing, though, when it became apparent that Cali had done it. Mentally, he winced, biting his lip as, like any child, a scolding gesture generally hit him hard when it came from someone he really wanted to impress.

He couldn’t really imagine why, though. Unfortunately, being at a camp where most of the children set squirrels on fire, and having hard to do so to various creatures that roamed the camp in order to protect himself, he didn’t really see what he’d been doing as wrong. It never occurred to him that there were much larger moral implications to this skill he was using. If Raz was as powerful a psychic as they thought he could be, there was a chance that, eventually, a power like that could be used to control people, and that was where the real danger of moral corruption set in. It was probably best if he was taught it was wrong to control thinking creatures now, while he was still eager to learn and not bitter against life as most teens were.

But the boy knew none of this. Right now, all he knew was that he had made a really awesome squirrel, and his teacher hadn’t liked it.

So when the arm was set between him, he had doubts about trying the same thing again. Maybe he shouldn’t show off quite so much? Biting his lip, the boy sent energies around the arm, trying to hold it together... but he soon found that there were a lot of difficulties in doing so. The psychic energies of the arrowhead interfered, unraveling his attempts as if it was a rival trying to untie a knot as he was making it. Narrowing his eyes, Raz concentrated harder, and pushed against the rival energy, overwhelming it until the entire arm was covered, three sharp claws trying to form at the ends like Cali usually did.

<…you weren’t kidding…>