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It's a bright and sunny day. Too bright and too sunny. It's damn hot. Bobby's oiled up and reclining in a lounge chair, in shorts and sunglasses and drinking a beer as he bakes himself in search of the perfect tan that has a good chance of causing cancer thirty years down the road. It's an idyllic setting for a Home & Garden's photo spread. Except that it's snowing ten feet away.
*
"You are not cool." Jean busts out, sitting close to Bobby with her own shades on. Gingers burn, Jean was already sporting a healthy shade of red due to being outside for a little while. Of course, she was kidding with Bobby, even though her tone seemed even and there was a lack of emotion there to decipher from. She cut it out after they brought the new kid home. She feels nothing.
Her hand reaches out, her mind concentrating on the snowfall in front of them, waving her hand slowly from side to side to make the little flakey flurries bend and sway in their direction. It was a great work out. And she tries whenever she has the chance.
*
New York in the summer time deserves to be described as roasting. Sweltering, a sauna. Whatever implies that sticky level of miserable humidity only a Louisianian could love, use that adjective. Which makes it all the more maddening that a redhead saunters out through the open doorway on the grounds looking positively peachy. A tall glass of lemonade helps deflect the misery, if she actually feels the miserable conditions at all. Jury's out on that one; Rogue has been noted to practice ashtanga yoga in blizzards, heat waves, and pouring rain without breaking concentration. Rogue, that other redhead with Jean in the vicinity, is every bit as likely to burn and hence the wide-brimmed sunhat gives her some protection from the worst.
"Let him chill, it's good for him. If you ask nicely he might give you some fresh icecubes for your water, too." Always remain on the ice machine… er… Bobby's good side, right? The bohemian goes gliding right up to the nearest flower and gives a petal a fond caress.
*
For his part, Alex doesn't really need a tan. Well, he's just slightly golden hued, but he's always that way. He couldn't tan, or burn, if he wanted to. This is both advantageous and disadvantageous. But he's almost certain not to get skin cancer ever. So what's he been doing? Swimming in the lake. That is until just now, when he emerges, goes over to grab the towel he had on a his cooler. He doesn't dry off so much as he drapes the towel over his shoulders, and wanders over to where Bobby's making it snow. He slips around the snow, and pulls a beer out of his cooler before settling in on it, then uses a bottle opener to twist the top off before he drops it back into the cooler and takes a swig. He seems entirely content by the weather. He even looks like he's enjoying it. "So, if you're working on a tan, Bobby." Alex eyes Bobby for a long moment, "… why are you making it snow, too?"
*
"It's fun." Bobby answers. "It's also good practice. It's not easy keeping a small area cold enough to make it snow in the middle of summer. It would be easier to make it snow over the entire school than that little patch." Besides, it's snowing off to the side where it's not interfering with his sunbathing. "And who needs ice cubes when I can just chill the drink directly?" As if in demonstration, he reaches out to touch Alex's bottle and it instantly frosts over. "Can you keep them all from touching the ground, Jean?"
*
"But it's not fair.." Jean complains. "People work hard for years to achieve that 'cool' look, and he just sits there and does it." Jean glances from Rogue to Bobby then, her nose wrinkling faintly, even more so as Alex begins to walk up from his swimming session. She even gestures towards Alex. "See?" Jean would be the first person to call bullcrap in that regard. Darn near every guy in the mansion had their degree of handsomeness. It's a wonder how the doors weren't slamming in the middle of the night.
She lounges back upon her chair then, still focused upon the snow, her sunglasses soon pushed up by that invisible force as she takes to multitasking. Could she keep them from touching the ground? "I.. don't know. I actually.." Her eyes squint as she tries, drawing her hand down flat to attempt to keep a few within the air, obviously missing more than a dozen snowflakes which join the pile upon the ground. "..I think I need glasses."
*
Eventually Rogue will leave her floral appreciation, and head over to the snowstorm. She passes right through the cloudy blizzard, the swirl of a chill eliciting a soft laugh out of the spry creature. Her glass is held up while snowflakes accumulate on the ice cubes already in it, lemonade adorned by a little rim as she waits particularly still for the effect to come into play. Patience is easy when you have sleeves, at least.
*
"Really?" Alex asks of Bobby, glancing at the mansion, "So smaller is harder? Well. Actually. I can relate. Its a lot easier for me to let a full powered beam then it is for me to do a more focused, pulled punch. Its even harder to be non-lethal, because then I have to time where the plasma stops and hit with pure shockwave." He then grins an appreciative smile at Bobby as his beer is frosted over, takes a swig, and then smiles at Jean with encouragement, "Practice, practice, practice… but good work there, anyways. Its probably a challenge to grab all the little flakes individually. Or can you grab several at once? I don't know how telekinesis works, so I picture it as an invisible hand… is that what its like?" Then he smiles over at Rogue, "Want a beer?"
*
Looking over at Alex, Bobby smiles. "Precision is always harder than just letting go." he notes. And the snow is staying within a square foot area. "So it's not that smaller is harder really." Curious as to how TK works, he looks over at Jean for her answer.
*
Jean slips forward in her chair as both of her hands join into the fray, with Rogue in the middle of the falling snow, she has a center to focus. "It could be like an invisible hand. Like I just take a part of myself and reach out to touch something that I can't feel. So I imagine it." She shapes her fingers by curling them, hoping to pick up the torrent of snowflakes to drape and dance around Rogue as if she were their very own Cinderella in the Summer, surrounded by snow.
"Or.. sometimes I imagine it as wishes. This is what I want to happen. And it happens. But either way, I can feel it. Like a tiny nudge in my brain that -wants- to work. And when I started to use it at the beginning extensively it hurt my head." She calls for the snow to wind along Rogue, curling and forming an outline like a tube to arch downward in front of her, winding like a snake to her feet.. then around again to dance in waves. "Now, it feels like nature. Where my eyes go.. where my hands move.." She was swaying then, "..where matter is beneath the mind and anything is possible."
*
Alex watches Jean for a long moment, thoughtful as he inclines his head as she explains how it works, and her hands guide the snowflakes around, "Your psychokinetic control does seem to be quite refined. Have you measured your maximum strength?" He tips his beer back a moment before he eyes Bobby a moment too long, "And if bigger is easier then smaller for you, do you know how big your ice storm can be? Not that I'm asking you to turn New York into winter, or anything!" He grins, "I just want to know, in case winter comes and if its unseasonably hot, if you can fix the northern hemisphere or something."
*
Bobby laughs at the suggestion. "New York state. That's funny." Though he's looking as if he's wondering about it. "I've never tried." He shakes his head and looks back to Jean. "Do you want to test that? I can make increasingly heavy things for you to pick up."
*
"I haven't, no." Jean didn't too much test herself out as much as she had been using it. "It would be something though, to see all of New York underneath snow when it's July and supposedly ninety degrees out." She was grinning then, slowly settling down within her seat as she allows the snow to fall as it would.
She then looks towards Bobby, then gives a shake of her head. "I.. don't particularly want to. It just doesn't feel like a good thing if.. when I try to push myself." That was pure honesty. "Besides. It's a relaxing day. Let's just keep it like that." She smiles then, dropping her shades down upon her nose, then leans back. "Mirrors. We need mirrors to tan. I saw an article about it."
*
"Well it's something you should find out, Jean… but not right now." This last bit is said with a quick smile and a nod, before he notices Bobby considering it and his eyes widen, "Hey now don't you dare! You could mess up global weather patterns if you succeeded! To make snow… you'd be altering air pressure, temperature and currents and lord knows what owuld happen." Alex shakes his head, looking a little daunted, "I'm a geophysicist and climate is part of my field, and I have no idea what a non-localized summer ice storm would do. Your power is one we don't want to find an upper limit on, Bobby! Well." He grins, "I'm curious how big the ice cube you could make is." Then he blinks at Jean, "Why mirrors? I don't really know anything about tanning. I can't tan."
*
"I should be able to do that." Bobby muses. "You can see your reflection in water. Ice is just frozen water. It would need to be very smooth…" And then he's grinning at Alex. "I wasn't going to try. People would /freak/ if it started to snow in July. And you should pretend, anyway. What if we had a visitor and you're the only one wearing a shirt on such a hot day. You gotta blend in Alex so…" He points and waggles a finger upwards. "Off with it."
*
Jean was about to offer up another protest. In fact, the look upon her face flashes near to anger than not, but it immediately is cooled by Alex's reassurance. "Okay.." She leans back again, her feet lightly bopping, still unable to understand the words that Alex speaks but.. in due time? With enough tutoring from him? She'll eventually get it.
Though, talks of shirts coming off and everything else has her rising, "That is -so- my cue." Ayup. Jean doesn't -have- to be a psychic to know that this could probably go in such a weird way that she didn't want to be apart of. "Um.. I'm going to .. finish reading a book.. or.. something." Yup! Books! Though, she was probably going to shower, eat, and take a nap. She was feeling rather dumpy. "You kids be good." And with that, she slides on inside of the house. Well, glides. However she does it.
*