voidtreckerexpress | "A strong man overcomes an obstacle, a wise man goes the whole way."

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"A strong man overcomes an obstacle, a wise man goes the whole way."

Who: Devero and Koumyou
Where: A locked quiet room.
When: After mission 15, but before platform.
What: Meditation training finally starts to move into manipulating chi. Baby steps.
Warnings: Nothing planned that would need any warnings, but I will update here if something comes up.

Once the pair had gotten one of the double cabins assigned to them, they'd done a lot of meditation practice in there. A lot, but certainly not all. More and more often, Koumyou has asked Devero to meet him somewhere busy on the train to sit down and try to focus, just barely out of the way in the cramped quarters. Over time, it's become a more common thing than hiding in their room to do this.

But he hasn't had them use a quiet room for this since they had essentially gained one of their very own.

Today is different. He's asked Devero to meet him in one of the upstairs rooms, where he's moved the central table temporarily up onto one of the seats on its edge, leaned against the wall.

He wants both quiet, and at least a little floor space, and this is really the only place those things intersect reliably with each other on the train.

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Devero is curious and a little excited about this change in their routine. He's been getting better and better at maintaining his mental focus even in the face of distraction. Hell, perhaps it was even his bashful boasting to his partner that he'd been able to center himself and meditate even in the holding bay at the end of the Ministry's rat maze that's led Koumyou to advance their training?

Whatever the reason, he arrives in high spirits, smiling at Koumyou even as he locks the door behind himself. "Hey babe," he says, crossing the little room to greet his partner with a k--

No, wait. Training time. "Er, I mean. Hello, sensei." He keeps a little distance between them, and bows to Koumyou instead.

Koumyou has only placed a boundary between teaching and the rest of their time together... because it seems to help Devero, somewhat. He smiles at the big guy, and inclines his head briefly in turn.

"Devero," he answers in greeting, before he continues, "Today, I want to start the process of building a bridge between your mind and your chi." And with that, he pulls his hands out of his opposite sleeves--

With a simple, standard-sized incandescent light-bulb in one. He holds it up.

"Do you know what this is?"

The use of incandescent bulbs had started to wane even in Koumyou's time. He can't even imagine what they use in Devero's. Something extremely sciency, he's sure.

But the very basic nature of this bulb is what makes it useful, here and now.

Yeah, Devero has only the vaguest idea what this object is, and blinks at it with bemusement. "A relic?" he suggests with an arched eyebrow.

Koumyou laughs at that, and steps closer to reach up and bop Devero lightly on the head with it.

Lightly! Because, you know, glass.

"It's a light bulb, silly! Incandescent, specifically. They were already going out of style in my time though; they take a lot of power and they heat up a lot."

And without so much as a bat of an eye, Koumyou lights the bulb up in his fingers, clamped around the metal bit at the bottom.

"I think it'll be useful for learning to control chi. Energy is energy, after all."

"So it is a relic," Devero says, his voice dry and his grin crooked.

But he focuses when the lightbulb activates in Koumyou's hand, seriousness settling over him like a garment. The priest has chosen his training tool well, because Devero understands intrinsically what's going on: "You're powering that with your chi."

Of course he is. Devero steps up to Koumyou, his hands lifting as if to cage the bulb, though he doesn't quite touch it.

"Yes," Koumyou confirms anyway, smiling up at him. He keeps the bulb lit for a few more moments, then lets it fade back to dormancy.

"Since Trunks taught you how to feel your own chi," the priest says, offering the bulb up, "I thought we could start with you learning to move it around inside yourself. Walk before running, right?"

Devero takes the bulb, turning it in his fingers as he examines it. He's never seen an incandescent bulb in person, but he's technically apt enough to understand how it works.

He swallows, but nods. "Can't control the machine until I've gotten the hang of connecting to it."

Looking up, he meets Koumyou's eyes. "Instruct me, sensei."

Koumyou reaches for one of Devero's hands, whichever isn't holding the bulb.

"Hold it by the metal bit like I did, and then pay close attention to both our chi. I'm going to light it up through you, so you can feel how it works."

Edited 2021-10-31 03:51 (UTC)

Devero takes Koumyou's hand with his free one and half-closes his eyes. The months of training on finding and maintaining his focus mean that almost automatically he evens his breathing and turns his attention inward. As he's learned from his brother, he's able to detect the pulse and shine of the life energy inside of himself. A little stretch of the 'sense' allows him to feel Koumyou's as well, so much more robust and brilliant than his own.

"All right," he breathes on an exhale, re-opening his eyes and fixing them on the bulb.

Just as Koumyou can pull chi from someone, like he'd done to make that intricate snow dragon at the winter faire with Devero's and his own chi, he can reverse the flow. Once Devero shows he's ready like that, Koumyou threads his own chi into Devero's body through his hand.

It's like cool moonlight, to Devero's 'sense'. An extension of what Koumyou would call his aura. And it flows smoothly into Devero and then through the arm holding the bulb, slowly so he can feel the almost... snowball effect as it gathers more energy as it goes.

Then it pools in Devero's fingers, and just sits there, right against his skin. And the bulb? Lights right up.

"We are conductive to chi just like electricity," Koumyou tells him after a few seconds, still keeping the bulb lit. It takes only a negligible trickle from him to keep the same 'level' built up at Devero's fingers. "One could even argue the electricity naturally in us is chi. Life energy."

Though Koumyou and the train's Saiyans are both bright as floodlamps to Devero's unrefined chi-sensing abilities, the way they feel is completely different. Trunks and his father seem, each in their own way, to burn, and Koumyou--

Well, Koumyou's the moon.

Devero's lips part with a shallow gasp as this time he can really feel the movement of Koumyou's chi into him. He can't help but contrast it to his own, shivery-feeling energy, akin to the first ozone-rich stirrings of lightning in an oncoming storm. Koumyou's energy against his is smooth and calming, sweeping up and directing the flow of Devero's chi as effortlessly as the moon directs the tides.

He tracks the movement of it internally, through his body and down his arm and-- the bulb is alight! Its glow reflects in Devero's eyes as he stares with wonderment at it.

"I can feel it," he breathes. "I can feel your-- energy-- your chi in me. It feels different from mine."

It's sort of unsurprising, really, that the moon has the easiest time manipulating water.

Koumyou smiles up at him.

"Everyone's feels different. Each life is different, right?"

He slowly turns off the supply going into Devero, and lets what remains continue to power the bulb for a few moments.

"Try, it's okay if it takes a while, just like meditation did at first." And, confidently, with a squeeze of the hand he's still holding, Koumyou tells him, "You will get there."

"Right," Devero says, but distractedly, more focused on the movement of the chi than anything else. He can feel it when Koumyou stops feeding him chi, and switches his attention to his hand, and the bulb, and the surfeit of energy in his fingers.

A surfeit that fades soon enough, since it's no longer being replenished, and takes the incandescence of the bulb with it. But he can feel also the difference between the ambient chi in his fingers now versus the intentional pooling of that energy a moment ago.

He squeezes Koumyou's hand back, tilting a grateful smile at the priest for his confidence. Then his closes his eyes, and focuses on directing his own chi to fill that emptiness back up again....

Koumyou releases his hand and steps back, folding his hands into his sleeves like he likes to.

The better to resist any temptation to help nudge Devero's chi along.

So, he waits. As patient as the moonlight, and as quiet.

It will probably take Devero several attempts to get anywhere, but if he starts figuring out how to push his own chi around... eventually, the bulb will light up for at least a second.

It takes him a while--

It's like there's a block in his head, some kind of dam between his ability to sense his chi and to manipulate it. He tries to push it along like he'd push a resist weight in the gym, tries to nudge or scoop or wash the energy in his body in the direction of his fingertips.

It doesn't work.

Koumyou can see him grow frustrated, then realize it's happening, then pause to refocus himself, over and over in a cycle. Finally he hisses his breath out between his teeth and slumps, letting his arm holding the bulb drop.

--It takes him a while to admit defeat. "I'm missing something," he says, looking up at Koumyou.

Koumyou's smile is as patient as ever.

"That's alright. Perhaps this will help?"

He pulls a bottle of water out of his ARMs band, uncaps it, and snaps his focus into place. The water flows up and out of the bottle and coalesces into a ball in the air.

"This is like the chi in your body. I feel mine mostly in my chest. And then, to move it..."

A strand of the water starts flowing outward, but soon enough the way it's flowing faster than it's moving makes the end start to ball up, building up like a wave might, but smoothly.

"I kind of do that?"

Edited 2021-11-05 11:41 (UTC)

Devero watches the demonstration with that particular serious determination that he always brings to his lessons with Koumyou. (It's easy to see the conscientious student who delighted his teachers and mentors through the years in the gravity with which he approaches this lesson now.)

He'd already been sort of trying to visualize the energy in his body as water moving, so he refocuses his efforts on that mental metaphor now. He closes his eyes and actually pictures it, a big bubble of water in his body that he tries to stretch out into streamers....

Yeah, it still doesn't work. Devero can feel the frustration under his skin like the prickle of electrical current along the wires of his-- Implant....

Up until this moment, Devero has attributed the fact that his chi feels sort of buzzy and shivery to his inexperience with it. He's assumed that as he gains control, his energy will sort of smooth out, turning cool and liquid like Koumyou's. But Koumyou's just told him that every person's chi feels different, and that crystallizes suddenly together with a memory from several months ago of Cherry telling him that she thinks he'd have an affinity with the thunder magic of her world. At the time he'd dismissed the suggestion, assuming that the 'thrumming energy' she'd described was the electricity in his Implants.

Now? Now he wonders if the crackly static of his chi isn't a sign of novice, but an intrinsic quality.

His eyes pop open and he meets Koumyou's for a significant moment before lifting the light bulb and focusing on it. This time he visualizes his chi not as water moving within his body, but neuroelectric impulse crackling through his nerves. He overlays his arm with a mental map of his nervous system, building that pathway up from his core and down to his arm line by line. And as soon as he completes the mental image, down at the nerves in his fingers, it's like a circuit connects: just like that his chi fills his arm and hand, feeding into the bulb--

Which lights up in his hand.

He gasps, his whole face also lighting up, but in his delight he instantly loses his concentration. The bulb goes dark again after just a second, but that doesn't stop his excited crow of, "I did it!"

"You did!" Koumyou confirms, just as enthused! He grabs for Devero's free hand with his, to give it a squeeze. "Magic man!"

He can't help but laugh. "More like magic boy," he says. "Magic apprentice. Magic neotek!"

"Neomage," Koumyou agrees happily, with another squeeze. He's used that term once before, but it seems like a good fit.

"Neomage!" Devero repeats happily. He squeezes Koumyou's hand tightly.

He lowers the bulb and looks at his mentor. "Can I feel your chi again?" he asks.

Koumyou takes a moment to funnel the water hovering in the air back into the bottle, and takes his hand back for a moment to cap it, tucking it back up his sleeve.

Then he offers his hand back. "Sure, want me to light it up again through you?"

Devero nods. When Koumyou stretches that thread of chi through his body this time, Devero concentrates less on how it moves and more specifically on how it feels. His training with Trunks, honing his ability to sense chi in another person, comes in handy here; with the Sanzo's energy actually working through him, the contrast is distinct now that he's looking for it.

"We really do feel different," he says softly, sounding a little awed, almost. "Our chi, I mean."

Koumyou nods at that, "Mine is... fluid. What's yours?"

He can't actually sense Devero's, after all. And the neomage is far from being able to push his chi into Koumyou's body like is happening in reverse here.

"Like water," Devero agrees. Which makes sense; hasn't Koumyou told him more than once about having an affinity for water in his magic?

"Mine feels..." He pauses, searching for the right word for a moment. But he says only, "Here," handing the bulb off to Koumyou and breaking the connection between their hands. He sits on the bench that's not blocked off by the table and pulls his shoes off quickly, then stands again--

--and starts shuffling his socked feet really fast against the carpeted floor of the quiet room.

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