18394/Trying new things

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Trying new things
Date of Scene: 22 June 2024
Location: Lake - Wayne Estate
Synopsis: AJ shows off his powers to Damian.
Cast of Characters: Allen-James, Damian Wayne




Allen-James has posed:
    AJ arrived at the Wayne Estates early today, the weekend meaning that he's 'taking it easy' on training. AKA, he's decided to train here, with Damian, rather than doing it in the weight room at Xavier's Mansion.

    Today, he's wearing new clothes. A simple grey T shirt that fits him so well that it /has/ to be custom made, and a pair of slacks which fit equally well, made of a fabric that moves easily, and never seems to take stains or wrinkles.

    "I'm telling you. There's this guy in Mutant Town, he can fabricate an entire wardrobe in less than two hours. He did some measurements, and.." he waves his hand over his tailored outfit. "And the fabrics are insane. So comfortable." Turns out, AJ likes clothes. Who knew.

Damian Wayne has posed:
When Damian is out in public he wears only the finest, most-expensive clothes. He is quite utilitarian about such matters but he has an image -- a secret identity -- to protect and maintain. But here, on the Wayne Estate, he is wearing light gray Adidas sweat pants and a formfitting white T-shirt. His white Adidas runners and his socks are removed and set near a tree by the lakeshore.

The young heir watches AJ go on about his clothes with a bemused half-smile that suggests that while he may not care much about clothes, he loves seeing his boyfriend animated like this.

"Vestis virum facit," Damian quips in Latin.

Allen-James has posed:
    AJ laughs at the latin, and smirks, "OK, ok, so I get a little caught up about clothes. I'm... nervous about talking to my parents. I want to look my best when I do." he admits softly.

    Then he waves a hand. "But I'm here to distract myself." he declares firmly. "And I figured, what's better way to distract myself than hang out with my boyfriend and try to figure out new ways to use my power." he announces with a grin. "You know, like, what I can do, right?"

Damian Wayne has posed:
Damian reaches behind himself and clasps his right wrist gently with his left hand. "Wear a handmade suit. I mean, I have to dress up a lot when I'm out in public. Most of it I don't like. But it's difficult to feel more powerful than you do when you're wearing a handmade suit." One corner of his mouth quirks upward. "And that's coming from a guy who wears the Robin uniform."

In response to AJ's question, Damian shakes his head. "I mean, you have talked about it in the abstract. And of course you were using your powers at the vampire club, but I was a little bit distracted at the time." He nods in AJ's direction. "Do you want to give me a demonstration?"

Allen-James has posed:
    AJ holds up his hand, and a glow forms. It spreads over his whole hand, then up his arm, then over his whole body. His face is set in a stern picture of focus. "My basic ability is to create a shield of sorts. I can create it over any part of my body. I most often use hands, feet, or arms to create it." The glow sinks back into his skin slowly, and he holds a hand up.

    "I can 'paint' it onto the air.." he waves his hand, and the orange glow solidifies into a pane of glowing orange, smeared into existence and then smoothing itself out. "If I leave it connected to myself, I can move it around, fairly easily. It doesn't seem to have much in the way of mass or inertia." he reports the findings of some tests he's done at the mansion.

    "The shield is a repulsive force type of energy. Most energies that contact it are absorbed, strengthening the shield, then most of it is reflected and released. If it absorbs too much.." he makes an explosion with both hands. "Boom. It explodes, releasing all the energy it tried to absorb. Like a grenade, usually."

    He pushes the pane of force out in front of him, and lets it detach from his hand, leaving it floating in midair. "When placed and 'released', the shield just... exists. It doesn't take any focus or energy from me to maintain it. It stays wherever I put it, and doesn't go away until it's broken, or, if you leave it alone, it goes away in a few hours, as it runs out of whatever energy I left in it. I'm working on learning to reabsorb it, but if I do it wrong, the energy destabilizes, inside my body. Which can lead to things like a sprained everything in my hand. So.. taking that small and slow."

    He demonstrates one further use of his power, stepping up into the air in a smooth, steady motion that shifts his balance without any forceful shove, then another step, and another. He leaves behind glowing footprints in the air.

    "I can walk, and to some extent, run, on my shields. Running is hard to stop. It's not like I have a good way to bleed off the kinetic force I gain, but, if you don't mind that, I don't know what my theoretical top speed is. Fast enough that I don't really want to find out, without some way to apply the brakes."

    He doesn't talk about the thing he's been doing without thinking of it, wrapping a fist or foot in glow before punching or kicking to multiply the force.

Damian Wayne has posed:
Damian watches with equal parts curiosity and concern. His keen eyes take in every detail, which he commits to his prodigious memory. His father has trained him to always know your friends as well as you know your enemies because the unfortunate day may come when they have to be confronted. That is why, for example, the Bat cave vaults contain one of the largest collections of Kryptonite in the world.

"That's remarkable," Damian comments as he moves closer to a floating shield. He reaches out a hand to touch it, to feel how it reacts to the kinetic energy of his slowly moving hand.

"Can others follow behind you on these force field platforms? Allies or pursuing enemies?"

Allen-James has posed:
    "Theoretically?" AJ says, a pensive look on his face, as he hops down from his shields, landing on the ground again. The shield feels.. slippery to the touch at first. Like a pane of glass with butter on it, the friction is very low, until you exert pressure. Then, it reflects as much pressure as is exerted, which makes the energy feel more.. sticky. Engaging with the force of the fingers. Enough pressure exerted, and there's actually a physical gap that opens up between the shield and the hand, though that feels like it's solid and gripping, until the force shoves the pressure away.

    "Try if you want. Go smooth and slow, and you can walk on them easily enough. Too much force exerted though, will trigger the reflection, and shove you off. Learning to hit them just the right angle, and just the right force to 'run'... It took me months of daily work, and I could control the angle I set them at. For someone to follow me.. They'd need to be one hell of an acrobat." he says with a chuckle, and a shake of his head. "but, it does leave a pretty obvious trail of wherever I've been."

Damian Wayne has posed:
The young heir wriggles his fingers around on the shield, assessing how it reacts to various amounts of force from different directions. "This is absolutely incredible," he whispers, eyes wide.

"If you intentionally land hard on the platforms you can space them farther apart," Damian says as he moves into position to attempt to climb up them. "That way if you practice and perfect it, others will be less likely to be able to pursue you. And you can attain vertical distance more quickly."

He runs barefoot across the grass toward the series of platforms. He intentionally jumps high and hard, which puts him at the 3rd ramp. But he was unprepared for how repulsive the repulsive force actually is. It sends him flying up high, easily the distance of a 3rd-story building. And now he is hurdling toward the ground with no net, no Bat line, no backup plan...

Allen-James has posed:
    "Not so..." AJ tries to warn Damian, but is too late. He sighs, as he watches his boyfriend launch himself into the air. "Hard." he finishes, and sighs. He expects Damian to have some sort of plan, but it quickly becomes apparent he doesn't. So, AJ does what he has practiced to do. He leaps into the air, exploding upward, not as far as Damian on his first step, but much further than anyone could normally leap. His second step hurls him at an angle.

    He catches Damian in his arms at an angle that flips them both around in midair, and as he's rotating, he kicks out with one foot, and a footprint appears there, killing much of their momentum. A couple more kicks that flip them around, and he's landing on the ground, hard, with Damian in his arms, tumbling into an awkward roll.

    "Still not great at landing with people yet. Or, on my own, if I'm honest. Do you know how hard it is to bleed off energy when every time I use a shield, it doubles the energy to bleed off?"

Damian Wayne has posed:
The youngest Wayne remains utterly calm through the entire process. This doesn't even make the Top 100 list of sticky situations that he's been in. One might even wonder if this was all intentional to see how AJ would react to a stressor.

"Well done," he says with a pleased glitter in his eyes when the two of them are once more on terra firma. "You stayed relatively calm and you worked the problem in real time. That's the kind of thing that is hard to teach someone. In some ways you either have it or you don't."

He shoulder bumps AJ and grins at him. These are all mannerisms and expressions that Damian displays for no one else. AJ is on the inside of Wayne life in more ways than one.

Allen-James has posed:
    AJ chuckles, blushing a little at the compliment. He's caught people in the air before, though he didn't think real hard about it at the time. It was more instinctive, and smoother than this, where he didn't have the heat of battle on the line.

    He levers himself up to sitting from where they ended up sprawled. "Anyway, yeah.. I'm not.. real worried about enemies trying to follow me. The angle of force, the amount of energy you put in, all of it matters when you're running on my shields, and no one without experience will be able to do it without some kind of super power that means that they could catch me anyway. We could probably train you to be able to follow me. I don't have any super strength or anything that lets me go further or faster than a normal person. Just a force multiplier." He motions at the shields.

    "Also, if I try to just.. exert repulsive force all over myself, rather than making it into a shield, I can kinda... explode. Like a grenade. Throws everything away from me, and me into the air a little if I'm on the ground. I can't control that much at all, it's more of an emergency measure."

Damian Wayne has posed:
Damian tugs on AJ's hand to get him to his feet. Then he sneaks in a smooch to AJ's cheek. "I want to see," he says gently, in an almost sultry tone of voice. "Will you show me?"

With a nod of his head out toward the water of the lake, he injects, "You could go out in the water and set it off, if you wanted to."

Allen-James has posed:
    AJ chuckles, and leans into Damian as he's pulled upright again, mmmming. "Ok. Stand back a bit." He kicks off his shoes, and socks, and then walks out into the water, rolling his pants up a little, though that won't matter soon.

    He focuses, and his whole body glows orange, including his eyes.

    The glow intensifies, slowly at first, then increasing, and over the course of maybe a second, begins to flicker like a flame.. then, with little more warning than that, there's an explosion of force, rocking out from AJ. AJ is shoved up into the air, but not far.. The 'explosion' continues for far longer than a grenade would, orange glow pulsating and pushing outward from AJ in sustained energy waves that last almost two or three seconds. AJ hangs in the air, an angry god of glowing orange, shoved up by the force exerted down, and held there by the equal exertion of force elsewhere. Without anything substantial to shove against, he just.. hovers there, glowing, waves of water flung away from his sphere of influence.

    Then he's out of energy, and the glowing sphere pulses, destabilizes, and sucks back into his body. He falls down into the water as it rushes back under him, a new splash driven away from him, as he pants, and looks.. worn out. "That takes.. pretty much all my energy." he says with a wry smile, as he drags himself out of the water.

Damian Wayne has posed:
The Wayne heir watches with two parts amazement and one part concern as AJ demonstrates this potent power. What precise thoughts are flashing through the young detective's keen mind are his alone, but one might imagine in his mind he is hearing words of warning from the Batman.

As AJ starts to climb out of the water, Damian moves to assist him. "That...wow. I mean, those are some powerful abilities." He tugs AJ's soaking shirt off of him, wrings out the water, and drapes it over the branch of a tree. Maybe he just wants to see AJ shirtless.

"What would happen if something with a great deal of mass or acceleration strikes one of your shields?" Damian inquires. "Like a bullet? Or a...I dunno...charging hippo?"

Allen-James has posed:
AJ shamelessly slides out of his pants as well, keeping on his boxers for modesty, as he tosses them over the tree to dry. He then flops back onto the grass, breathing kind of heavily, like he just ran a long distance.

    "If a shield gets shot, it tries to absorb all the energy, destabilizes, and explodes. About the force of a grenade, though, I imagine if it got shot by something really really energetic, the force of the explosion might be greater. A charging hippo.." AJ shrugs and looks amused. "I was worried I'd find out with a charging Rhino, once. The Central Park Zoo got attacked, and I was there busking, so I helped out, mostly distracting and shooing the animals away. But an angry rhino was charging some news people. Luckily, it got dealt with before it tried to run over any of my shields, so.. I still don't know. I'd imagine it would explode things all the same."

Damian Wayne has posed:
Damian smiles down toward AJ. "A hero with a good heart and quick reflexes," he remarks. He reaches for AJ's hand to help him up. "No wonder father likes you. Come on, let's go inside for some food. Alfred will get your clothes later."