Description: Zach's "school" gets off to an early start, thanks in part to Cammy, when Chiyoko and Doctor Hayashi swing by for lessons.
Wellspring House
SouthTown
Mid-Evening
Zach Glen is sitting on the porch in this insanely posh Japanese-style home, staring out at the pond thoughtfully while simply listening to the shishi-odoshi make that occassional 'Doink!' sound. He really needed to do something extra nice for Chun-Li at some place; this place is an excellent place to relax.
Zach is about to see how well it works for the other intended purpose today. He had gotten a call from one Cammy White about a certain wild child that was learning a lot about the world while ALSO having to deal with fledgling psychic abilities. Zach was hoping he could help Chiyoko with the latter part.
Phone calls were made, directions were given. All Zach Glen could do now was wait.
A car pulls up to the house before stopping as the doors open. Chiyoko seems to be the first one out, with Dr. Hayashi getting out a bit more slowly than she had. "Wow..." Chiyoko says apparently fairly impressed as she looks up at the house. "Yes... He must be a fairly successful fighter if he can avoid to live somewhere like this I suppose." he says before they both start to walk up towards the front door, before Dr. Hayashi rings the doorbell.
There is a man, dressed in buisness casual, who answers the door. He looks at Chiyoko, then the doctor before tapping his Bluetooth earpiece. He mumbles something before nodding. "He's waiting for you," the man says in a polite business tone. "If you'll follow me."
The assistant leads the pair back to the enclosed back yard. The place is in a classic Japanese style, and is decently kept. Zach is sitting on the porch when the trio enters. He pulls himself to his feet quickly, a smile on his face. "Welcome," Zach says as he extends a hand to Chiyoko, then the doctor. "I'm guessing Miss White talked to you."
"Not about this... But I have met her before, yes." Dr. Hayashi says, "She seems to have been getting along with Chiyoko rather well ever since their first meeting in Dresden... It's good to see that there's someone willing to train her. I'm hardly able to give any assistance to those with abilities like this." he says, then shakes Zach's hand before Chiyoko takes Zach's hand and shakes it enthusiastically. "What are we going to be doing?" Chiyoko asks, "I know it's training but I didn't really know that anyone else could do something like this." she says before she furrows her brow in concentration and holds out her hand as a faint purple flame, or perhaps miasma seems to envelop her hand before it disappears and she appears to be breathing slightly more heavily, apparently somewhat strained from that display.
Equal parts enthusiam and relief wash over Zach's senses. This, along with the sight of Chiyoko's purple 'flame' cause Zach's eyebrow to twich faintly. Memories come back with a quickness. China. /Vega/. He shakes his head slightly, banishing those thoughts.
"It's no problem, Doctor," Zach replies as considers for a moment. He takes a deep breath, releasing it slowly. He nods towards the yard, leading the young lady out onto the grass. "Let's start with visualization, I think," Zach says. Chiyoko can obviously bring the energy out on command, and banish just as easily. In a lot of ways, that's the /hard/ part.
"Your energy is linked to you mind," Zach says. "Your will, your imagination." He takes a preperatory breath, lifting his right palm to chest level, aiming it at the sky. He focuses for a moment, as golden light slides down the arm from the elbow. Motes of light fall away from the uplifted limb as pieces form around it. Slowly building the working, it starts to come together.
A moment later, a fully realized, stylized gauntlet composed of Soul Power is fitted around the hand. Zach opens and closes the hand, the glove matching his movements. "I'm doing this slowly," Zach explains, "Because it is easier that way, and maybe so you can figure out some of the how of it. I form it like this a lot, so it comes easily to me now."
Chiyoko closes her eyes as prismatic light appears over her arm, apparently a bit more chaotic than most and showing signs of being both affiliated with psycho and soul power though slightly leaning towards psycho. Slowly, plates start to form in an odd configuration but seem to be quite disjointed and resembling something between doll gauntlets as well as Zach's glove perhaps indicating a certain degree of distraction or wandering thoughts. She then opens her eyes and looks at the glove, smiling a bit at the display as she slowly tries to open it before the plates shift into an even more disorganized form and dissipate. "Aw... I thought I had it." she says, apparently somewhat disappointed at the result before she concentrates again as a couple of simpler plates form over her hands while she moves her arms around, apparently doing a decent job of keeping them in place though she is moving fairly slowly.
Zach watches, a somewhat intense look on his face as he watches the display. "Not bad, though," Zach says of the first attempt. "Focus is important." He smiles faintly as the thing falls apart. He watches the second attempt. He tilts his head peering at the thing again.
"Not bad at all," he says finally. He thinks for a moment, grinning faintly. "Make it go away," he says after the moment has passed.
The plates slowly dissipate into the air as Chiyoko moves her arm around once more apparently examining it in a strange way before she says, "That was neat... Maybe I should try that more often!" she then pauses before saying, "Can your powers make you feel weird? I mean, can they make you feel like doing something you don't think you want to do?.. That happens to me sometimes."
Zach frowns at the question. Red flags go up in his mind. "You're going to have to give me some examples," Zach says after a long moment. There are a LOT of things he does not know, and he's normally the first to admit that. But while using the power during a fight is like an adrenaline rush-plus, it's never really /forced/ actions on his part.
"Well, sometimes when I think about what I can do, the source of it makes me feel like I should be hitting people even after a fight is done or attacking people for disagreeing with me too much." Chiyoko says, "I don't want to do either of those, they make no sense but... Sometimes if I'm hurt really badly or really angry it makes me feel like doing things i normally wouldn't."
Zach takes a long breath, letting it out slowly. "I think you have the answer to your question, then," Zach says. He doesn't want to just /give/ her the answer; she needs to figure it out on her own.
That's not to say he won't give her a clue. "So what is the source of your power?" Zach asks.
"I don't know... I've just always been able to do this as far as I can remember." Chiyoko says before Dr. Hayashi sighs and appears to look a bit worried as though he's unsure of whether or not he wants to share something.
Zach's eyes flick to Hayashi. A faint grin is on his face. "Got something for us, Hayashi-sensei?" Zach realized a while ago that he had to have the good(?) doctor on board with the learning process; he sees Chiyoko as his only protection against the people he stole her from. If he gets worried, and rabbits, that will be the end of it.
Dr. Hayashi appears uneasy as he walks forward saying, "...Yes. I recall seeing some information back where she was held... They were trying to change something called soul power into psycho power. I don't think they were finished when I stole her, but that might explain a certain degree of what she's talking about."
The Doctor confirms pretty much what little Zach knew. He bites his tongue on the obvious correction right now, that Soul Power and Psycho Power are basically two sides of the same coin. That might confuse the whole issue.
He nods to the Doctor. "Okay, remember what I said earlier. That this power is linked to your mind, your will," Zach says carefully.
Chiyoko nods and says, "I wonder if I can..." then holds out her hand as a ball of glowing energy appears in it, mixed with the purple of psycho power as well as the green and blue of soul power before she furrows her brow and appears to concentrate. Slowly, the purple starts to recede a bit as the green and blue starts to overtake it before it explodes in a flash apparently having been a bit unstable in the conversion. She then smiles and says, "I think... That was a bit better than before. It felt different."
And Chiyoko dodges the question. Only part of Zach is surprised by that, really. "But does it answer your question," Zach asks with a raised eyebrow.
"I think so..." Chiyoko says, "I mean, it's a part of me and it reacts to me, even if some parts of it don't feel like what I want it to be." she says with an abnormally thoughtful look on her face, "I guess it'll become what I want it to if I just keep trying to use my own thoughts with it instead of the thoughts that seemed to come from the power right?"
"Perhaps," Zach says thoughtfully, "It might be easier to consider that there is nothing in that power that is not already inside you." Zach folds his arms across his chest, letting that sink in for a moment.
"...So a part of me really does want to attack people like that." Chiyoko says apparently somewhat disappointed before she smiles and appears more cheerful saying, "I don't have to if I don't want to though, it doesn't matter how a part of me feels so long as more of me feels differently!"
"Yes," Zach says with a bit of seriousness. "But as long as you recognize that, you can start to deal with it. Or embrace it," he says. "But that decision will always, /always/ be up to you."
He smiles a bit to lighten things a bit; that revelation (while important) is a bit of a downer.
"I think I'll just try to work with who I am now." Chiyoko says, "I don't want to become someone who does things like attack people just because they're doing something I don't like, or because they know someone I'm trying to fight. That's just not me. I'm glad that I understand how people feel though, I didn't really understand that until I went to a part of metro city that felt... Bad. A lot of people were feeling bad about that, and I didn't realize that people could feel like that. Or at all. But then I talked to my dad about it and he explained it to me!" she says, smiling at Dr. Hayashi.
"Always a good place to start," Zach says sagely. "So try the glove again. Remember to focus." Zach waits, and watches. He's curious to see what comes of this attempt.
Chiyoko extends her arm once more as she furrows her brow, plates of psychic power slowly forming around her arm. This time around, it seems as though it's significantly more similar to a doll's gauntlet, save for the shifting miasma of colors in a fairly stable manner. She then slowly moves her wrist up and down with a notable smile as she waves around her arm, playing with the articulation in a steady but still controlled manner. "I did it!" she says, apparently fairly happy at her achievement.
Zach grins. "Try throwing a punch with it," he says, gesturing at the air. "See if you can make it follow your movements."
Chiyoko assumes a fighting stance and makes a couple of punches, the glove lagging behind her hand a little bit but noticeably so as she does so. She then looks over at a tree and throws a particularly strong punch at it as the glove flies off of her hand and smacks into the tree, leaving a decently sized impact in the bark and a bit of the wood beneath it too. Chiyoko appears to look at it for a bit before she says, "Uh... I really wasn't trying to do that, I just got carried away!" with an expression that seems kind of cheerful but also a bit embarrassed too.
"That," Zach says with a wince. "That happens." He walks over to the tree, looking at it carefully. Trees... do not have souls. He doubts he'd be able to fix this by himself. "But you can see," he says as he gestures at the tree, "That loosing control can have direct consequences." At least, he thinks, it wasn't a house. Or people. Zach frowns a bit before looking back to Chiyoko.
"It's going to take time, to get all of this," he says. "Time and effort. But the pay off will be worthwhile."
Log created on 21:07:36 05/22/2012 by Zach, and last modified on 16:36:42 05/26/2012.