9244/Morning Run

From United Heroes MUSH
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Morning Run
Date of Scene: 18 September 2019
Location: 1407 Greymalkin Lane - Breakstone
Synopsis: Techno-Sam and Shannon go for an early morning run, building trust, friendship, and teamwork in the process!
Cast of Characters: Nightingale, Samuel Morgan




Nightingale has posed:
     Oh-six-hundred comes bright and early. Too early for some, but not for a certain winged healer. Shannon's already been up for about half an hour getting dressed, scarfing down a quick breakfast--including the true elixir of life, coffee--and heading out to the backyard of the school to meet Sam-bean for a run. She hated the necessity of image inducers, but in this case, where the length of Greymalkin Lane would offer the least problematic environment for a long run, it was prudent to err on the side of caution. She met Sam-bean out in the backyard, and the two were chatting companionably as they made their way out towards the Lane, with a staffer in tow, trying to keep up with the pair and keep an eye on the encounter.

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    Oh-six-hundred, that magical time when many of a certain persuasion are already up and about, and the majority of the world is still blissfully asleep. It is, in short, the perfect time for PT, and that has been part of Sam's routine for as far back as he can remember. So when 6 AM rolls around, he's out by the back door in his running gear, which is his usual outfit but with shorts rather than sweatpants. Greeting Shannon, he wasted no time in quickly stretching and then leading the currently-wingless healer on a quick lap of the back yard, a jog around the side of the school to the front yard, and then out into Greymalkin Lane.

    So far he's kept a companionable silence while running, but in the solitude of the lane, he permits himself a smile again.

Nightingale has posed:
     Coffee or no, Shannon was a little bit bleary-eyed this morning, although the run was doing some measure of good at clearing the fog from her brain. She tries--and fails--to stifle a yawn, plainly not as used to early morning PT as Sam-bean. She laughs a little bit, and grins ruefully. "What does oh-six-hundred stand for? 'Oh my God it's early!' " The pace is, so far, an easy one, and she does well enough at keeping up.

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    "I'll be honest, I'm surprised you didn't ask me if I meant morning or afternoon." For Sam, Bean to his few friends, the morning jog is as much routine as brushing teeth or having breakfast... and breakfast is something he has /after/ the run, not before. He's keeping a leisurely pace, knowing they have at least two hours before they should be back to get ready for classes. Cardio is cardio, it's not a race. "I bet if I'd said 'oh six-hundred Lima', you'd have asked me what time, right?"

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon laughs and nods, grinning a bit sheepishly. "Before my dad was a mortician, he was in the Navy. Got out well before I was born. So I picked up a little bit here and there, but something tells me the Lima part is BS." Yes, cardio was cardio, but she did have to wonder at a few things. "Eighteen hundred hours would've been what you said if it was afternoon you meant, anyways."

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    A short nod is the response, and a slight widening of the smile. "Eighteen hundred is six in the afternoon, well done. But Lima is actually real." Sam's turning this into a quick tutoring session, it seems, eyes on the road and not bothering to check that the poor staff member assigned to watch him is managing to keep up. "Lima, NATO phonetic for the letter l, which is used to indicate local time. If you have a large organisation, like the Navy, you need to tell every part of it at what time you want them to execute an order, and all of them could be in different time zones. So Lima, local time. Not to be confused with Zulu."

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon nods. "Dad made a game of having me memorize the whole phonetic thing when I was little, but I didn't know Lima was used for local time. What's Zulo, in this case?" She glances back at the staffer behind them, giggling up a storm. Gesturing with her thumb behind her, she grins wide. "What do you think, can we out-pace that one?"

Samuel Morgan has posed:
Samuel glances behind them, turning his head just far enough so that he can still see the road, Shannon, and the staffer in his field of vision. When he looks back, he shares a glance with Shannon, a smile and a raised eyebrow. "Out-last, almost certainly. I give them a mile before they have to fall out." Which was, back in the day, the ultimate sin on the team run.

    "Zulu? Imagine this, you have an organisation that is so big, it exists around the world." Like the Navy, or SHIELD... or HYDRA. But he's not going to bring that up. "Orders get given in one part of the world, for units on the other side. Or you have a unit that moves fast, and can cross time zone limits pretty quickly, like most jets in the air force. Let's say you want to time an attack to happen at the same time in Addis Ababa, San Francisco, Tokyo, Sydney and Beijing. That's five different time zones. You might have an aircraft that's moving between them. If you give the orders in Lima, you have to work out exactly what each location's time is, and hope you don't make a mistake. And for the aircraft, do you give the order in the time zone for the air base? The time zone it's currently in? The time of the target location? Imagine sending a single order out, to all those units, and all of them need to know when to strike at the same time, no matter how fast they're moving or what time zone they're currently in. Then you use a single time that all of them know, and that all other time zones are calculated from. Zulu time, the time at the Greenwich Meridian, and you let the commanders in the field do their own calculation."

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon nods, scratching the back of her neck for a second. "Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. Keep it to the K.I.S.S. principle." She laughs softly, elaborating before he needs to ask. "Keep It Super Simple. But anyways... sure doesn't seem likely we'd be encountering that anytime soon. But still good to know." She tries not to smile -too- much, and fails miserably, chuckling. "I'll be generous and guess a mile and a half. They're no slouches here."

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    Another glance back at the staffer, and Sam shrugs for a moment. "Guess they can't be, not if they're watching me. Can't underestimate them." Who knows, they might even manage to do the full three miles, and then Sam will be really impressed.

    "From what I saw in that training room yesterday, this sort of thing is going to come up sooner or later. Whatever they're doing in the school, I'm guessing they're not expecting us to go to university and get a degree."

Nightingale has posed:
     "Actually, I've heard you can go as high as college classes here if you want. I plan to, myself." Shannon tilts her head, slowing the pace of her run but not stopping, as she considers how much to say, and what to leave out. "In the interests of honesty, I can't say that's -all- that's here. But I'm still kind of new to things myself, so you might want to ask Cannonball for a bit more of the 4-1-1. Or Doug, if you track him down first. Just not too clear what I am and am not at liberty to say. That's something I need to ask about." She offers an apologetic smile. "Got to admit, though, the training last night was a blast. Think that's one of the best times I've managed to work with anyone as a team so far. Maybe there's hope for me after all."

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    For his part, Sam does not slow down until it's clear that Shannon isn't going to be resuming the pace, and then drops back to keep level with her again. "Tired already?" He makes sure to smile when he says it, to show he doesn't intend to criticise anyone for their current fitness level.

    But the topic lingers, and he has to comment on it. Of course now he knows that Shannon knows more that she's not saying, and that makes him choose his words carefully for a few moments. "I'm certain there's more, but I also know that it won't do me any good asking about it. I'll have to wait and see what they want to tell me and when they want to tell me. But nobody takes on a case like me just because they feel generous. They want me for something, everyone has always wanted me for something, so I'll just have to wait until the other shoe drops."

    And this time, when he changes the topic, there's no art to it. "Ever heard of the four stages of team work?"

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon shakes her head. "There actually -is- a lot of good in the world. There can actually be real honest-to-god altruism. The things I can't exactly say, I will say are a choice, not forced. You might be presented with options, but it's up to you which ones you accept."

     Her smile returns, and she chuckles, going along with it. "Not tired yet. I was just slowing down more for your sake." Her eyes twinkle as she challenges him, just for the fun of it. And she resumes their previous pace, determined to not be the one to fall out. That would be really embarrassing! "No... what's the four stages of teamwork?" Shit, why hadn't Sam or Doug or any of the others discussed this stuff with her?

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    It's as much a mystery to Sam as it is to Shannon why this hasn't come up in her training yet. He has a suspicion, but not enough of one to give voice to it, and at any rate it won't do any harm for anyone to know this. It's starting to slowly dawn on Sam that much of what he knows can be useful in ways his tutors probably never intended. The pace resumes apace.

    "There's scientific terms for them." Sam begins, smiling again. "But I've always remembered them like this; Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing. We started stage two yesterday, we're actually actively engaging in the second stage right now."

Nightingale has posed:
     "Whoah, wait a second. We skipped right to stage two? Did we miss stage one in there somewhere?" Shannon laughs and shakes her head. "It's been pretty crazy since I've gotten here. I was homeschooled for most of my life, and when my mutations manifested a couple years ago, well... I grew up in a pretty mutant-unfriendly area. So it made getting out and having a life difficult. Got here about two days before my birthday in late July, so... yeah, there's still a lot I'm getting used to. It hasn't really been all that long--even if it feels like I've lived a whole lifetime already." It was beginning to dawn on her just how vastly different her experiences had been to Sam-bean's, though she had no inkling of the full extent of his. Oh, certainly, she gathered it had been pretty structured, with all the militaristic references, and then there was the unusual hologram in the danger room last night. But there was so much that had yet been left unspoken. Perhaps with time. She'd relay as much of her own experiences as she could, though. "I'd not trade any of the things I've experienced here for anything. Good or bad."

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    "Stage one happened when we met." Sam clarifies, and then goes into a bit more detail with a bright smile. "Every team goes through those stages, and they never stop. The moment I joined, the team that was you and Cannonball, was reset to the second stage. You're trying to figure out who I am, what I can do, and how I fit. Once we know that, once that's settled, we can start to practice as a team, and practice working together in a way that brings out the best in all of us. And when someone leaves, or someone new joins, we do it all over again."

    Given the hologram yesterday, he feels he owes Shannon at least some kind of explanation. "I was actually home schooled as well, in a nice house in Virginia. Lived with the man you saw in the hologram, Herr Ludwig Eisen. Doctor Eisen. He... headed the team that built me."

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon nods slowly. "I heard little you in the hologram call him 'Papa'. Do you ever miss him like one?" She smiles, her own eyes bearing a little bit of mist, aching not just for herself, but for Sam-bean as well. "My folks are still alive and well. But I don't know if I can ever go home again to stay. They were such a big part of my world... I miss them. A lot." A single tear does fall. "But family can be found in the most unlikely places."

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    There is a silence after that. One that is almost unnatural given how free Sam had been with his conversation until just then. He continues to jog, even listens to everything that's being said, but doesn't actually say anything for at least a minute. Possibly he's thinking about about how to frame what he's about to say.

    "He's dead." is the opening gambit. "Died on June 30th, 2024." A few more steps, and his face turned away so that neither staff nor Shannon can see his expression. "... I killed him."

Nightingale has posed:
     Suddenly, a whole lot came into focus. The militaristic references. The apparent need Sam-bean had for structure. His hesitation and uncertainty at the school so far. His disbelief in hope and altruism, and seemingly natural suspicion of the school and others in it. And the current need to have a staffer supervising interactions with other students. He'd been raised and trained as a weapon, and something had gone very, very wrong. So wrong that the only man he knew as a Papa, was now lying at rest somewhere. "I can't even begin to imagine how that was for you, or how it's affecting you now." Shannon quickens her pace to come up alongside Sam-bean, well aware now that if he chose, her life could be forfeit, but electing instead to trust him. "Whatever you did then, though, whatever you were, I think you'll find it doesn't matter quite as much as you thought it might here. You telling me might help me understand a lot of things, but it doesn't change the fact that when I look at you, I see a friend and a teammate."

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    For this entire time, Sam's running form hasn't changed one bit. His smile is a bit more ragged around the edges, but at some point in his life he must have made peace with himself... if such a thing is even remotely possible. At the very least, he might be able to look into a mirror from time to time. "You're the first one I've told outright." And that, right there, is probably a large vote of confidence. Or is Sam trying to move onto the third stage of being a team?

t"I mean, other people know. It's in my file. But you're the first... you're the first person even near my age that I've told." How much does staff know? The one watching is certainly paying a lot of close attention now, must have heard that statement. Must have known? "Because if we're going to be a team you have to know this, and because... because I have to tell someone. Someone who's not paid just to listen to me tell my story again, someone who, y'know, might actually give me a real response." And now it's Sam's turn to slow down. There are no tears in his eyes... there might not be any left, but he's looking a bit more haunted than before. "So that's why I've got people watching me talk to other students. They're here to protect you, not me."

Nightingale has posed:
     Every instinct Shannon has is screaming at her to give Sam-bean a hug. But, she also remembers how careful Cannonball was about so much as touching him. Her brows furrow slightly. It couldn't hurt to ask, could it? "You okay with a hug there, Techno?" She refused to use his old name, Scorpion. That was not who he was here and now. And she could see plainly a simple hug was needed, just decent human contact.

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    The request nearly stops Sam in his tracks. He actually stumbles for a step before catching himself and returning to the old pace, eyes suddenly wide in what looks like panic. His pace picks up until he realises he's nearly at a run, and has to evaluate why he's actually trying to run away from someone who clearly has the best of intentions. Moreover, seeming to run away from staff would be the quickest way to ending back up behind a locked door, so he slows once more and lets Shannon catch up.

    He looks at her apologetically, expression slightly more human again. "I don't trust myself. I'm sorry."

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon nods, not bothering to hide her disappointment, but understanding. "I trust you, though. But I get it. The offer stands." She makes no move to hug him, respecting his wishes for the moment. When he runs ahead, she matches pace, and when he falls back, so does she. It doesn't look like running away, it looks more like two teammates challenging each other to stay in sync. "It's just hard to see a friend hurting, and not be able to do anything for them."

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    "Some wounds take time to heal." Sam smiles over to Shannon, the cloud of melancholy passing quickly, or at least being hidden. A glance over his shoulder shows that the staff is still with them, although a bit further behind than before, and the teen gives his team mate a genuine grin. "Mile and a half, tops."

Nightingale has posed:
Shannon giggles, her smile returning, the glistening mist in her eyes chased away for the moment. Angels would weep for the wounded, but it wouldn't be here and now. For now, it was just pure and simple fun, clothed in the disguise of fitness and training. "You sure about that? I'd say a mile, max. We'll out-last them by a long shot."