om_main | Paul and Angie

Angie decides to go for a run after squad practice. Paul joins her. Lots of rambling conversation. Angie learns that Paul doesn't know much about computers. Paul learns that threatening to take somebody flying isn't really a threat.

Paul was still not entirely comfortable with his assigned squadmates. Sure, he could work with them in drills, but it wasn't easy to put his full confidence in anyone except Midnighter, and that was going to hold him back sometime soon. Worse, it was going to hold the squad back.

That meant that he needed to get over himself and start believing that the kids he was meeting at the school were going to be around longer than anyone he'd known in the homes. Long enough that he might even be able to make... friends.

Which was why, when he saw Angie heading in the opposite direction to the showers after their training session, he fell into step beside her. "I don't think you're gonna find a shower that way."

The whole squad thing was taking some getting used to for Angie, too. She'd signed up for it, but that hadn't meant she knew exactly what she was getting into. Add to that her new schedule that included learning how to fight from Midnighter and it was probably a good thing that she was good at her school work.

She'd let the armor go as she left training, pulling her hair back up into a bun with a hairband. It wasn't that surprising to hear footsteps following her, but it wasn't Midnighter who spoke. She paused, looking up at the big blond guy. Apollo. Paul, she thought his name was. "I could," she said with a smile. "I mean, they have bathrooms and showers in the dorms. But no, I'm not. Yet, anyway. I was going for a run, clear my head a bit." Made sense to wait for the shower until after the run.

Bathrooms and showers in the dorms, and there were plenty of reasons that Angie might be looking for privacy for her shower, but if she wasn't headed for a shower, that would make talking a lot easier. And a lot less creepy. "Mind if I join you? I could do with some practice staying earthbound."

Though if she wanted to clear her head, it might be that she wanted to be alone. If so, Paul hoped she'd be comfortable enough to say so.

"Sure. I'm just making a circuit around the grounds. Well, not the full grounds." That would take a while, after all. "I'm always happy for company. I just normally run alone so I use the time to...mostly not think."

"So you want me to keep my mouth shut?" The full grounds wouldn't take that long, for Paul, but this was Angie's circuit.

She laughed and shook her head. "Talking is good. I just tend not to think about things like homework or whatever projects I might be working on. Which actually seems to help me get a better handle on them."

"I'm pretty sure I can do not talking about homework," he promised, grinning. "I mean, I know I've got stuff to do, but it's probably different to yours, anyway."

"Probably. I think we're in different grades." She wasn't certain about that, but they didn't seem to be in the same classes. She'd have remembered a guy who looked like him, after all.

"Yeah, probably," Paul said easily. "I'm not great at school stuff."

She looked up at him. "Any particular thing you're having a problem with?" They'd reached the front door by now so she opened it, stepping out onto the front porch of the school.

"That would be talking about school." Paul grinned at her, catching the door and following her out. "And I thought you didn't want to do that."

That got a grin and a laugh, Angie shaking her head. "Okay, I walked into that one. To be fair, it's not MY schoolwork, so it's totally different."

"Not totally," Paul insisted. "We're at the same school, it can't be totally different."

"To my head? Totally different." She shrugged, heading down the steps to start stretching. Sure, she wasn't going to push herself, but stretching was necessary. "But yeah, we'll avoid school work. So. I've seen you around school, but I'm pretty sure I've never seen your name on the network at all."

"On the network?" he echoed. Sure, he'd heard it mentioned, still didn't mean he knew what it was.

She blinked up at him. "The school network? It's kind of a school-wide social media thing with journals and being able to talk to people. How long have you been here?" Longer than her, of course, but still.

"About six months?" Paul wasn't entirely sure. Months and dates seemed to mean less than days and weeks, and he hadn't kept track of the weeks. "Is the network a computer thing, then?"

"The network is definitely a computer thing. I'm taking it that you're not much into computers, then?"

Paul shook his head, then tipped it back to appreciate the warmth of the sun. "I never had one of my own."

"My family had one," Angie replied, finishing the last of her stretches. Which, apparently, Paul didn't need. Bastard. "I was pretty much the one who kept it updated and replaced bits when they needed to be upgraded."

Whether it was the speed with which his muscles healed, or that there was enough warmup from the squad session, or just the sunlight sinking into him, Paul definitely didn't need to stretch, merely rolling his shoulders to make sure they were loose. "Your mutation is machines as well, though, right?"

Angie shook her head as she waved for him to join him as she started moving. "Nope. I know my codename is 'Engineer', but that's because I like machines and computers and things like that. The metallic blood and armor is the only mutation I have. The rest of it is just...me."

"So your code name is something you chose instead of something you are?" He tilted his head to glance at her as he fell into pace with her, nice easy stride.

"It was for me. I mean, what sort of name was I going to come up with for metallic blood armor, hmm?" She was absolutely not going to push herself. The conversation was nice and Paul had said he needed practice keeping his feet on the ground. That was harder to do at a slower pace. "I know there are a couple of others who give themselves names based more on who they are than what they do. It's not common, but it does happen."

"It still feels weird to have a codename at all," Paul admitted. Slower was easier. Slower meant he had time to concentrate on keeping his feet actually hitting the ground. The faster he got, the more likely he was to just skim over the ground.

Angie nodded. "No kidding. It's still really weird, even if I did choose it myself."

"So which do you prefer?" Since Midnighter, Paul wasn't assuming that anyone preferred their 'real' name. The ones that knew it, that was.

"Definitely Angie." Which, yeah. She knew Midnighter preferred his code name. There were likely others who did, too. "You?"

"Paul." Except with Midnighter, but that was... different. A lot of things with Midnighter were different. "Good to officially meet you."

Midnighter was pretty different, period. "And you. I mean, I know we've been on the same practice squad for a bit now, but we don't exactly spend a lot of time together outside of that." She thought maybe that should change.

"I guess it's taken me this long to figure out this one might last." Six months, though. He wasn't sure last time he'd stayed in the same place six months together. "I haven't spent a lot of time with many people. Nothing personal."

She smiled over at him. "Hey. You're the one who came up to talk to me. I'm not sure there's anything there I should take personally." He'd reached out. It was probably a good thing for him.

"Intruding on your peaceful meditation run?" he teased gently, grinning, and making sure his feet were actually hitting the ground. Enough to push off and give him momentum, not solid enough to jar his muscles.

Angie laughed and shook her head. "Not that much mediation. I just sometimes think better when I'm not thinking. If that makes sense in the least."

"But that's what meditation is, right? Not thinking?" Not thinking about anything else except his feet, anyway, about keeping that steady pace and not pushing faster.

"Hmm. I suppose so. I never gave it much thought." And grinned again because of the joke. "But I come from a big family. There were always people around at home, so yoga and stuff like that would never have worked. Not for me, at least." Besides, most meditation required you to stay still for far too long.

Family was definitely a foreign concept, but lack of privacy wasn't. "Yeah, it was sort of like that in the homes," he agreed. "I mean, I don't know about yoga and stuff, the closest I ever did was, like, tai chi? Except not. Just, something like that."

"Huh. I wonder if tai chi would work. Maybe for you, too. I mean, for staying grounded." She'd never given it much thought. "I'm the youngest of seven. Plus my grandma lived with us for a while. It got a bit crowded sometimes."

"I haven't found a time where it's a problem if I float a bit," Paul admitted with a smile. "Just, you know, it's turned into a challenge. sort of want to prove it to myself that I can still do it, if I want to."

She tilted her head in a half shrug. "Sounds fair. And yeah, with your height, I doubt anybody's going to be looking at your feet."

Paul cocked his head in return, puzzled, and distracted enough to miss the ground, falling behind without the momentum to push him forwards until he recentered and caught up. "What's my height got to do with it?"

"Because they have to look up to make eye contact," she pointed out, doing her best not to be amused at him. "If you're looking up already, most people aren't going to bother looking down. And if they do? Most of them won't make it past your chest."

"Are you... hitting on my rack?" If Angie wasn't going to be amused, Paul definitely was. Amused and bemused, laughing softly. "I think that's definitely a first."

Well, if Paul was going to be amused, Angie wasn't going to bother holding back a laugh. "Dude, you have to know that you're hot."

He grinned, holding a hand out towards her. "Comes with the mutation."

"I am so not complaining about your mutation." She paused, then took his offered hand.

Grin widening, he squeezed her hand very gently. "Hotter than baseline human."

She blinked, then cackled. "I didn't mean...well, physically hot, yes, but that's not exactly what I meant."

"I did." Paul let go of her hand, settling back into pace. "Are you okay talking at this speed?"

She snorted, shifting to start running beside him again. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'll run full out when I'm not trying to carry on a conversation." Which would totally be later.

"Don't let me hold you back," he said easily. "So what's this network computer thing, then?"

"Promise you're not," she assured him. "The school basically has a journaling system up. Kinda like LiveJournal, I think. They're all connected up so that we can talk to each other and it makes it easier to put out the call if people want to join in for a night of bad movies in the TV lounge, for instance. A lot of the new students introduce themselves on it because it's faster than trying to track down every person in the school to meet them."

"I don't know what LiveJournal is," Paul admitted. "So it's sort of like a mini internet kind of thing?"

Angie's expression was pained. "For the purposes of this discussion, it's close enough. You know you have school-based email, right?"

"Someone mentioned it?" he said vaguely. "I haven't got a computer, I use the ones in the library when I'm doing schoolwork, so it's not like I could check it much, anyway."

"Okay. So, after we shower, we're going to the library and I'm showing you what's up." Like it was completely and utterly decided. Because as far as Angie was concerned, it was.

"And after that, I'm taking you flying?" Paul wasn't against learning more, but if he was going outside his comfort zone, then she could as well.

That made her stutter to a stop, staring at him. "Wait. You'd take me flying for teaching you computer stuff?"

"If you want to." He grinned, stopping beside her. "Do you?"

"Do I want to go flying, he asks. Pfft." The stare morphed into a grin. "Hell yes. Flying would be awesome. I mean, I like my mutation? But flying would have been so much cooler."

"You might have got something less cool with it, though," he pointed out. "I don't think anyone's got just flying."

"All I got was metal blood and armor. I still feel a little cheated."

Paul shrugged, turning back towards the school buildings. "Metal armor sounds pretty cool, though. What does metal blood actually do?"

"Creates the armor." Angie moved to follow him. "I mean, it's just that the armor can't come out of nowhere. So my mutation decided to make it out of my blood, but in order to do that, it had to change my blood entirely."

"So your blood just comes out of your skin?" There were weirder mutations.

"You actually have a ton of capillaries that are just under the surface, so it's not that big a stretch." Angie shrugged as she kept pace with him. "And yeah, there are weirder mutations just here, but...I don't know. It's just a thing with me. Though apparently, Midnighter thinks I have potential. Except I can't fight for shit."

"Potential for what, then?" If it wasn't fighting...

"He's teaching me how to fight." She shook her head. "He's not the one who calls my fighting shit. But after a few training sessions with me, I can definitely say it is and was shit. Hopefully, it'll get better."

"Who are you comparing yourself to, though?" He tilted his head, watching her, and drifting absently off the ground. "Him? Because Midnighter's mutation specifically adapts him for fighting."

"You're floating." Well, it was best to point it out to him since he was trying not to. "I know. And I think the rest of you have been doing the squad thing for longer and all. I just...feel a little out of place, I guess. I'm working on it."

"Crap." Paul anchored himself down again, forcing against the pull of the sun. "If it helps, I was JROTC before I manifested, so I've kinda done something like it before. Without the powers, obviously."

She waved it off after a moment. "I'll get used to it. I adapt fast. One good thing about being the youngest. You get used to things changing around you."

"Well, if you ever want to work through anything with someone who's not built for fighting..." He grinned. "I don't think you've got any problem, honestly, but if it's bothering you..."

"I wouldn't say no," she said honestly after a moment. "I mean, it couldn't hurt, along with what Midnighter is teaching me."

"And he'd definitely tell you if I taught you anything stupid." Paul offered his hand again. "I guess daytime though, right? I mean, you still need sleep?"

Angie nodded. "Everything still functions as normal in my body. I just have different color blood." She looked over at him. "I would have thought...does your body store sunlight like a battery, then?"

"Something like that, I guess?" He shrugged. "Don't need sleep, don't need food. Just sunlight."

She tilted her head, looking up at him for a moment. "I suppose we should just count ourselves thankful you didn't turn green."

"Don't think it would suit me?" Paul teased. "There are worse things than being green."

"Not really. Doesn't go with your hair," she quipped back, grinning at the tease. "And yeah, there's worse than being green. I think a couple of the kids around here could tell you that. Just saying we should be glad you didn't go fully plant, that's all."

"Don't think there are many plants that fly." Something about roots, maybe, which wasn't something Paul had ever had in any sense.

While there were definitely a few things that came to mind, Angie kept the thoughts to herself. She could be good sometimes. "No, really not. So you're kinda in a class all your own, I think. But, then, most of us are."

"Which is why we're here," he completed, and held the door open for her to go back inside. "I still need to shower, though."

She grinned at him as she headed inside. "You're not the only one. But...thanks. For the run. And we'll head down to the computer lab and I can give you the quick electronic tour, yeah?"

"Yeah," Paul agreed with an answering grin. "Just let me know when you're ready. And thanks, Angie."

"Any time, Paul," she replied with a wave, then turned to jog upstairs. And start planning things like 'Computers 101'.