"Great. Saturday night is a busy night for street crime, any time from rush hour to well past midnight. What time should we meet, and do you want me to come to your place or do you want to meet me at Daeadalus or somewhere else?"
--M. J. Young
"I'll come to Daedalus; it's more convenient that way, since I already know where that is."
"That's cool. What time should I expect you? Oh, um--your sister is welcome to join us--or not, whatever works for you guys."
--M. J. Young
"Whatever time is good for you. I'm pretty free on the weekends. It's up to her whether she wants to come or not," I glance at Saka, "But I can't really imagine her not coming if I'm going."
"All right. I'll look for you any time between eight and midnight--I don't guess you want to go out later than that. Good?"
--M. J. Young
"See you at eight on Saturday, then."
Of course, today was Saturday, so you're talking about next week. It's now late Saturday evening as you and Mariska head home, making small talk about the musical, how intricate some of the passages were and yet the performers were able to sing them clearly while dancing very challenging steps.
"You see music videos like that back home, but you know they're lip-syncing the lyrics and playing the studio recording. They do those things live here. How did you know?"
The next day will be Sunday.
--M. J. Young
"How'd I know what, Isky?"
I'll continue my training Sunday, hoping for Kat to interrupt me with her arrival. If not, no big deal.
Edited after seeing my GE roll: oh, so Kat isn't coming because she's spending the afternoon with her new boyfriend who's in the ninth grade, huh? Guess I'll find out soon enough.
"How did you know that the musical would be so much better than anything we see back home?"
*****
You end up with a late fall blizzard, which means that the city is closed for the day, with only superheroes and villains getting around (and even some of them are snowed in). It looks like schools will be closed on Monday as they continue to dig out the streets, although some of the supers are offering to help.
--M. J. Young
Hmm, to help or not to help...
Well, not to help, of course, but up here from my window I'll try to use pyrogenesis to melt some snow.
You do manage to melt some of the snow on sidewalk in front of the building--something you've never done before--but it's not much, given the distance at which you are attempting this.
--M. J. Young
To Mariska in response to her question, "Seeing a musical was your idea; if you want my take on why it was so good, I'd say this world is special. Things come easily here."
It's fine that the pyrogenesis only worked a little. I'll go ahead and resume my training as usual.
I'll look into the system to see if there are any suggestions or programs for very difficult training regimens for the finer mental aspects of combat and gut feelings; the good doctor's somewhat recent mistake which heightened my instincts in this regard has gotten me curious as to whether I can train this somehow.
If I am understanding you aright, you want to find suggestions for training your intuition, looking in the computer in the verser compound. Is that correct?
--M. J. Young
Precisely
Someone signing himself Tadeusz made some notes on trying to improve his dodging abilities by increasing his ability to anticipate attacks and make snap judgments.
He pulled out a pitching machine and a tennis practice machine, loaded both with balls, and set them to fire at irregular but brief intervals (which he says was about three to fifteen seconds each) over an area wide enough that if he contained himself to a ten foot square in the corner of the room they would all hit within that space. He wore padded armor for this, because the hardballs of the baseball machine could crack ribs. Part of the point, in fact, was that if he could not avoid both he attempted to take the hit from the tennis ball rather than the baseball, but it was better to avoid being hit entirely. He gave himself one point for being hit by a tennis ball and three for being hit by a baseball, and with one hundred balls in each machine the best score he managed to get was ten. He started around fifty.
He also indicates that he started working on a device that would drop objects from above at random, but he never completed it.
--M. J. Young
Tadeusz, huh? I wonder briefly how he pronounced that, and think whimsically to myself that I could have taught him a thing or two about dodging projectiles. Still, I'll ask the computer the whereabouts of the tennis ball machine.
You know where the gymnasium is. The tennis ball launcher is in a closet on the south wall.
(The pitching machine is also in there,along with a few hundred balls for each.)
--M. J. Young
I'll go set the two of them up and go ahead with my blindfold, panoramic awareness and missile avoidance skills, wondering if this will actually help me. Maybe for someone who can't already dodge bullets, but...
Once I've done this a short time, I'll find Mariska and explain to her what I want to do, how it isn't working, and ask whether she could help.
Dang, boy--you have a 2@9 intuition. How much do you hope to improve it?
Actually, your feeling is that it does help your ability to dodge. Your blind fighting kicks in (much more appropriate in a blindfold situation than panoramic awareness, which utilizes peripheral sight as part of the sensory information) and your missile escape is getting some benefit, as well as your agility. You recognize the distinct sounds of the two machines, and from the echoes the trajectories at launch, and manage to stay out of the way. It might even be helping your intuition, although it's going to be a long path to an improvement.
--M. J. Young
Well, I did specify "very difficult" ways. :P
«»
Wow, it's working, then? Excellent. I'll keep score the same way he said he did, 1 point for a tennis ball hitting me, 3 for a baseball, and see how I do. Time to go for his record.
It's nice having goals.
Your starting score is 30, which with two hundred shots means you're avoiding eighty-five percent of them. His 10 means he managed to avoid ninety-five percent, and the difference is a lot more than it sounds--it means that to get there you'll have to reduce the number of balls hitting you by two thirds.
But Mariska is impressed, and thinks she might try it as well, although without the blindfold initially.
--M. J. Young
Bump
I encourage her to try, and warn her that baseballs hurt quite a bit.
I make a mental note that this is a Good Thing and determine to leave the equipment out and ready so that I can make it a part of my normal routine. An hour each day devoted to it ought to be sufficient.
My post is showing here for me.
I encourage her to try and warn her that baseballs hurt quite a bit.
I make a mental note that this is a Good Thing and determine to leave the equipment out so I can make it a part of my routine. An hour each day should suffice.
Mariska's first score is 40, but she's not blindfolded and she intends to catch up with you somehow.
Remind me--when are you anticipating Kat to visit again? What else do you have happening besides school and physical training?
--M. J. Young
Today was Sunday and it snowed, so Kat couldn't come over. She has an open invitation. Supposedly, we'll be looking at a snow day tomorrow.
This Saturday night I've made plans with Icarus to go out hunting. I left Daedalus Corps on good terms. Mariska still works there in their Science Department, so they know how to get ahold of me.
Dr. Z may or may not contact me, either with a request for a favor or news of an advanced way to improve upon my already stunning appearance.
Dreamweaver was offered my assistance, should she need it.
You do get the snow day on Monday, but there are a few superheroes out helping clear the streets and getting emergency services through to where they need to be.
--M. J. Young
And I'm devoting Monday to further training.
Monday morning Mariska got a routine call from human resources asking if she needs to stay home to care for her brother and/or needs transportation to get to work. She says she can manage and will be there, although she's not completely certain she'll be on time if she gets delayed by travel conditions.
Tuesday school resumes.
--M. J. Young
I suggest to her, "Of course, you could fly there. Probably wouldn't make as good time as a motorcycle, but I imagine you'd be drier."
And I'll apologize to Kat for the snow throwing off our Sunday plans, and politely explain that I'm unfortunately busy this weekend, but perhaps we could get together at some point during the week.
Training regimen coupled with studies and homework, resume.
"Yeah--you know, it would be cool to work on something like a motorcycle that flies. What do you think we'd have to do?"
Kat is disappointed about next weekend, but says she'll ask her mom about whether there might be another time. Of course, mom's not too keen on her being out on school nights.
--M. J. Young
"Uh, hmm. A flying motorcycle." I act like I'm thinking about it for a moment. "Well, it would be a simple thing to lift it telekinetically and move it while you're sitting on it, but I don't think that's what you mean.
"You know who could probably get something like that done? Daedalus, for sure. Just don't fly it too close to the sun, or the wax that holds the antigravity device on might melt."
"Oh, sure, Daedalus could do it," she says with meaningful sarcasm. "I'll be sure to ask him next time he stops by for lunch."
--M. J. Young
(ehhh, I was talking to Mariska.)
"Well, you work in his building, so I figure you guys might cross paths once in a while. We're going out with Icarus this weekend, so maybe we can broach the subject then."
I am sorry; why did I think you were talking to Kat? Oh, I see--we had parallel conversations and I didn't go back far enough to realize that. Sorry. Yeah, I thought you were talking about the flying motorcycle with Kat, because she was mentioned by name in two previous posts and Mariska wasn't.
Roll it back.
"Sure, Daedalus--he built wings for Icarus, you know, well of course you know, you've been out with Icarus. I don't know that Daedalus built them himself, but I'm sure he was part of the design team. But you've got me thinking. Of course, we could put together a machine, and see if we can come up with some sort of magical way to make it fly; but in this world I would be there's a way to take one of our motorcycles and retrofit it for real flight--develop an antigrav system, maybe. Maybe I need to go back to school to learn enough to do something like that, but I would bet someone here has got antigravity of some form.
"Of course, once it's off the ground, the wheels wouldn't be of much use; we'd have to figure out some kind of propulsion system that would enable it to accelerate and turn using the same controls but a different result. Probably set it up such that pressure on the axles disengages the flight system and engages the surface drive. Any ideas?"
--M. J. Young
"Uh. Yeah. Pressure on the axles."
All smiles, clearly not understanding. Let's try this again.
"You know who could probably do something like that? Daedalus."
She laughs.
"You think we can't build something like that? Maybe you're right. But maybe we should think about it.
"Look at it this way. I could suggest it to Daedalus, and he would say sure, they could build that, but what would they do with it? The government wouldn't approve such a thing for years, decades maybe--that's what happens with so many things Daedalus Corp creates, it remains prototypes in storage because of safety testing regulations and such. So the way I would have to get it built would really be to say, I want to be a superhero and I would like to have a flying motorcycle to get around the city, and oh, by the way, could you make one for my brother, too? And then he might do it--but then we'd have to do the superhero bit, probably with costumes and the whole shebang. I certainly don't mind doing that--but I know you don't want to go that route.
"So if we're not going to do the superhero thing, how do you suggest I persuade Daedalus to tackle this flying motorcycle idea?"
--M. J. Young
Wow--who'd have thought "shebang" would be in the spell checker?
I nod, thinking about this.
"There are a couple things we could do.
"One would be to kidnap him and threaten his life unless he creates a schematic to follow, and then take the schematic to someone who knows how to read it.
"Two would be to tell him that we want to be superheroes. Of course, we'd have to hold up our end of the bargain at least once in a while for appearances' sake." Grimance.
"The third option is to tell him that we want to be superheroes, and, after it's built, tell him that we've changed our minds. We then sneak into the holding facility, snatch a few nifty gadgets that aren't on the market, and bust out on the flying motorcycles. We fly to the docks and catch the next boat to Doc Z's as well as amnesty, I'd anticipate, and as a peace offerring give him the nifty gadgets we'd snatched."
She shakes her head.
"Capturing Daedalus is right up there with capturing Toller. Most people never see him, but only see a projected image. I'm not certain he's even in the city. And I know that Doc Z has declared his island an independent country and no one has at this point proved otherwise, but the mayor and the governor and the president all say he doesn't have the right to do that and his island is actually part of the city. There just hasn't been a situation that required anyone to fight about it. We might be such a situation. So if you don't want to be a superhero, forget I mentioned it. Northgate has enough superheroes without us, probably, and it doesn't hurt for me to be a lab tech for a while."
--M. J. Young