Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-5543592-20190520181834/@comment-5543592-20190616030617

DB Baxter wrote: Rick took his shots, using up pretty much his entire clip on those few disks alone. When all was said and done, he had managed to hit half of the disks. The rest gently glided down to the ground untouched.

"... Shit," Rick grimaced. "You ain't missing an eye or something?" Josey asked.

As Morgan and Denis headed off to drink, Tanner decided he'd resist the urge to also drink and went to find Cable. He noticed Shanks and Kayleigh parring up, and while he thought it a strange match (as he would for anyone matching with Shanks), it wasn't particularly something that bothered him. At least it finally cleared up any latent feelings he'd had for her. He was married, after all, and he couldn't let something like that distract him.

Cable was in the main room, bouncing a ball off against the wall. Tanner was struck by how boyish it was. Cable was still, very much, a youth. He'd only recently reached what approximated "manhood," and even then there was a certain lack of maturity to him. Or perhaps it was how people were supposed to be. He'd faced the horrors of the wastes, but was a little more sheltered from them than Tanner had been. Tanner wondered if he'd had an any hand in that, if he'd been a good guardian to Cable. He hoped so. At least that would've been something he could do right.

"Having fun?" Tanner asked, standing back by the conference table.

"Passing the time." Cable replied, catching the ball, and throwing back at the wall. "Not much else to do here."

"This isn't like other stuff we've done, Cable." Tanner said. "I can't protect you from something like Shrike."

"I don't need your protection." Cable said. "I've did without it for a long time.  I never asked for it."

"You get it anyway." Tanner said. "It's something you don't have a choice in."

The young Causer screwed his face at that. "You sound like my mother." Cable retorted.

"She must been an intelligent woman. " Tanner replied, just as smartly.

"She's a control freak." He chucked the ball with more force. "She had my whole life planned out for me from the start.  That was something I never had a choice in either."

"Not such a bad thing." Tanner said, folding his arms and leaning up against one of the glass screens. "Having parents who love you.  There's a lot of people who wish they could say the same."

Cable hesitated a minute at that, before continuing, undaunted. "There love was conditional.  It only applied as long as I was the son they wanted me to be."

"Said every angsty teen ever." Tanner said with a smirk, unimpressed. "Did they force you to eat your vegetables and brush your teeth too?"

"You can make fun of me, but I remember how it was." Cable said, catching the ball and pausing. He turned it over in his hands. "I made the right choice leaving home."

"I won't debate that with you." Tanner said. "You're useful here, Cable, I'll say that.  You're one of the most talented people with power armor I know, especially for your age.  But I'll also say that your parents probably miss you.  And that if you went home, you wouldn't be in any danger.  It's me Shrike's after, not you."

Cable looked back at him. "I'm a part of this, aren't I?  This coalition we've got?"

"You are."

"Then I need to see this through." Cable said. "I walked away from the Cause.  I won't do that again."

Tanner nodded, and decided to change the subject. "Anything interesting happen while I was gone?"

He shook his head. "No.  Shrike showed up in the Divide and fought Paul and Morgan.  It didn't go so well for them."

"I heard."

Cable grew a small smile. "Do you think you could take her?"

Tanner shrugged. "Does it matter what I think?  I bet a lot of people probably thought they could."

"A lot of people weren't you."

"Don't put me so high up on that pedastel, Cable." Tanner scoffed, for once finding some wry amusement in the boy's adoration. He really was relentless. "It's going to be a long way down when I fall off."

"You say it like it's a predetermined thing."

"If there's one thing I've learned, it's that all idols are false.  The Boss lived for two and a half centuries, fought the fight all that time.  I thought he was the best there was.  But even someone like him gave in eventually." Tanner shook his head. "In comparison to that, temptation comes a lot easier to everyone else."

Cable looked down at his feet. Tanner knew the boy hated it when he talked like this, but Tanner wanted to make Cable's education complete. The world was imperfect, it was dark. Because of that, you had to be the best you could. But you also needed to understand that no one, no matter who they were, was invincible. Things like good and evil only stretched as you let them, and in the wasteland they rarely reached further than the mind's eye.

"I'm going to train." Tanner said. "And eat.  I'll be around."

"Sure." Cable shrugged, turning away, disheartened. The ball continued its rhythm against the wall. Tanner deposited his coat in his room and headed towards the elevator, going down into the hanger.

The lights were off, and they clicked on as he entered. Looking up at the large hanger doors, he headed over to one of the Vertibirds and searched the cockpit for the button to request that they open. It took a moment of searching before he found it, and soon the doors began to screetch, peeling apart.

Sunlight snapped through, bright and warm. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, feeling it on his skin.

There were several key thing Tanner understood about the physics of light, importhings to who he was. The first was this: photons had no mass.

So, if Tanner wanted to, he could end the world. A black hole forms when something very big--such as a star--collapses inward. As a massed object, should Tanner reach the speed of light which, theoretically, he could, he would be accelerating so quickly that it would create a singularity. By doing so, he would be crushed into the shape of two-dimensional pancake, fall unto infinity into the black hole, which would began to rapidly expand, shred the planet apart, swallow what was left, and all life would cease to exist. It would be an incredibly unpleasant end for everyone involved. Such were the dangers of psykers.

Thus, Tanner was very careful to restrict how he used the movement portion of his photokinesis. A photon was a mass-less particle, but just because something didn't have mass didn't mean it couldn't affect the world around it. What Tanner did, he understood, was essentially change the spatial coherency of the light around him. Which meant it's shape, how it struck objects, how it struck him. Its what allowed him to lift himself up.

So when Tanner looked up at the hanger doors, he didn't so much think Let's fly! it was more a subtle, nagging urge that the light surrounded him tug him upwards, with just enough force to overcome gravity. First gradually--he tucked his arms into his sides, opened his hands to guide his ascent--and then rapidly. The open hanger doors approached and Tanner shot through them, leaving a brief after trail that glowed a hot, bright orange like the evening sun.

The sky opened to him and he bolted through, unable to resist the grin that spread onto his face. The wind plastered his hair back against his head, whistled in his ears. He was unable to hear his own whooping. He banked hard, the wind buffeted him as he took the turn, his eardrums popping as he changed rapid altitudes. The Doppler effect acted upon him and the roar of the wind grew steadily into a piercing, unintelligible whine.

He shot up towards, the clouds and gradually came to an arresting halt. He spun slowly in the air, to look down at the desert below him. It expanded in every direction. To the east, the Colorado Plateau. To the west, Sierra Nevada.

He wobbled unsteadily as unblocked air currents pushed him, threatening to pull him along, but he held steady.

Up here, the world was better, Tanner felt. It was smaller, more manageable. He didn't feel so little in it. Were he to hold this for a while, it would began to cost him. Even this frivolity would have it's price, but it was necessary. Both for his peace of mind, but also for the reassurance. He sensed he'd need all his strength soon, and it was good to know his talent for this hadn't waned.

"That's enough." He murmured to himself, starting his descent. He began it first as a slow drop, then he ducked his head and plummet straight towards the ground, his fall controlled. Again, it was less him flying, but more controlled falling. Gravity had re-exerted itself-- Tanner was only making so instead of splatting against the ground, he cruised down like a leaf on the wind.

He shot through the hanger doors and banked again, the floor whooshing beneath him, and dropped onto his feet, clothing ruffling.

He smoothed out his clothing, fixed his hair, and headed back upstairs.

"I'm going to get a specialist for you, Willy." Miller continued. "It'll just be a bit.  And then once Shrike is handled, you can go home, if you still want to."