New Kids on the Block

Posted on Wed Aug 28th, 2024 @ 11:36am by Connor Bruin & Hayden Davis & Maeve MacKenna

Mission: Episode 5: Days of Fortune Past
Location: Breakstone Lake
Timeline: October 14th, 1990
Tags:

October was bullshit. The month wasn't even halfway over, but Connor had already made up his mind. So much turnover, so much upheaval, it was weighing on his mind. But he had two options. He could sulk and lose himself to his introspection or he could take action.

As team leader, he had two new members that he needed to know better. Social niceties weren't his strong suit which was why he had doubted his qualifications to lead the X-Men in the first place. But he had been asked and then he had accepted. It was do or die on a number of levels.

Being that he was generally nonverbal, Connor did not ask the newbies out to the lake in the traditional way. Instead he had left them a note to join him on the lake after breakfast. Now he waited on the dock, wondering whether they were the prompt type and doing his best not to lose himself in memory of his time with Bliss on that spot one night long ago.

Hayden had gotten Connor's note to meet at the lake after breakfast. It was an unusually warm day for mid-October, but the sun was the only thing in the sky. So maybe that contributed to it. Hayden still put on a bikini underneath her clothes just in case there were some water antics. She checked the clock before leaving and grinned. Right on time.

Hayden came walking up to the lake barefoot and neared the dock. "Hey Connor!" She called out and waved. "Nice morning, huh?"

"YES, IT IS MORNING," Connor confirmed, happy for once that his device was doing the talking for him. He put away his internal misgivings and focused on the situation at hand. "THANK YOU FOR COMING. HAVE YOU SEEN MAEVE?"

"Thanks for the invitation. And no, not since breakfast," she said. "I'm sure she'll be here soon, though." The music continued flowing from the orange foam covered headphones that hung around her neck. She reached down to the Walkman clipped to her belt and pressed the stop button. "Sorry. It's a new tape from the music group New Kids on the Block. My mom put it in the care package from her and my dad. I hadn't had a chance to listen to it yet and thought the stroll out here would be okay."

Connor pursed his lips. "Oooooooo..."

Maeve had gotten lost. Again.

This whole place was a maze and that was just trying to get out of the mansion! Eventually though she made it and found her way to the lakeside. Hayden and Connor were already there. "Great, now I look late..." she mumbled to herself as she approached the pair of them.

With a sheepish wave and half smile she looked between them. "Hi, guys, sorry I'm late. Traffic was a nightmare," she joked with her Irish tones making her words seem lighter and more jovial.

Connor glanced at Hayden for confirmation that Maeve was joking, then he smiled. "THERE WAS NO APPOINTED TIME, SO YOU ARE NOT LATE. I AM GLAD YOU BOTH CAME BECAUSE YOU ARE NEW TO THE TEAM AND I WOULD LIKE TO BECOME BETTER ACQUAINTED IN SOCIAL TERMS AS WELL AS TEAM DYNAMICS." He turned and walked toward the shore line as soon as he had finished signing, so his device was talking away while his back was turned. "BOTH OF YOUR POWERS ARE COMPLEMENTARY TO ONE ANOTHER, SO I DECIDED WE COULD ACCOMPLISH BOTH GOALS AT ONCE WITH A SIMPLE AND FUN EXERCISE."

Turning back around, Connor held up a bundle of tools he had taken from the supply shed. Assorted shovels, spades, trawls, and a hand pump that ran a hose out to the lake were set about the shoreline with care.

"WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A SAND CASTLE BUILDING CONTEST. THE DESIGN WILL BE MEASURED IN SIZE, RESILIENCE, AND ATTENTION TO DETAIL. MAY THE BEST ARCHITECT WIN."

Without further ado, Connor dropped to his knees and began mixing water into the shoreline to separate the mud from the sand.

Maeve could do nothing but smile. He was quirky, and she liked that but she wasn't sure if he fully understood what her powers were. She could feel the sand beneath her feet, almost like a vibration in the ground that let her know it was there for her if she needed it. With a twist of her hands she could pull the sand up and make a fantastical sandcastle in a matter of seconds that was only limited by her imagination and precision skills.

However, never wanting to be a show off or in fact ruin the thought Connor had put into this idea she decided to do it manually and use the tools he had brought out. Have some good old dirty fun and behave like a normal girl for a change. "Sounds like fun Connor, great idea." she said as she began to gather some things she'd need. Luckily back on Achill Island, where she grew up, there were plenty of sandy beaches to make a mess on.

"Sand castles," said Hayden. "I grew up in a suburb of Buffalo. I only made sand castles once a year when we'd vacation at the beach." She laughed. "And that hasn't happened since my powers came around. Water wizard learning how to control her powers at the ocean didn't work too good. Anyway, I like the idea." She grabbed a spade and trawl and looked around for a bucket or some kind of form. Without one nearby, she'd have to come up with some other idea.

Hayden knelt down on the shoreline and looked at the water lapping on the edge. Accomplishing both goals at once had been Connor's words; social terms, team dynamics and complimentary powers. "You know, Connor, I can help with that." Hayden waved her hand at the lapping water and formed a solid sphere. She brought it to hover over the area. "I can I wet it, but I can't separate it." She looked at Maeve. "Is that something you can do? At least to get us started with mud-less sand?"

In reply, Connor threw up a complex chain of handsigns before he remembered he had removed his gloves that connected to his speech-generating device. He sighed, wiped his hands clean on his jeans, and slid his them back inside his gloves.

"POWERS ARE ACCEPTABLE. JUST REMEMBER THE CATEGORIES FOR FINAL JUDGING." With that said, he removed his gloves and began shaping out a foundation that ran nearly 10 meters. Evidently Connor was in this for the long haul.

Listening to Hayden talk Maeve watched a sphere of water form and smiled at seeing something similar to what she could do. "Sure." she replied. "If you wet it I can pull the sand from it.". Maeve would help Hayden, and even Connor, but when it came to sculpting things out of the earth, and sand was no different, she was only limited by her imagination. Behind her sand had already began to swirl and form the foundations of her own castle.

Connor smirked as the girls coordinate their construction plans, but he didn't slow down himself. Everything he did was the hard way. Or, at least, the manual way. It wasn't hard for him to plot out the foundation in his head, though tracing the foundation lines with the exactitude he envisioned was nearly impossible. If he adjusted the guide strings tied to pegs in either corner one time, he adjusted them fifty. By the time he began slopping water into mud and mixing sand together, he was significantly behind the other two. Yet he was patiently calm, as if everything was right on time.

Hayden helped out where she could and then moved to her own foundation. She took a trowel and dug out an area in which to build her foundation. Next, she moved some separated sand into the square hole and began the mix, scoop, flatten, jiggle move technique of hand-stacking the mixture. Her goal was to create a solid, packed-down foundation on which to start building and forming walls and towers. Adding and removing the water as needed was easy enough.

It wasn't long before she had her first tower built. Hayden had decided to go with an ocean theme for her design. The details and carving would come later, but the base of the tower was shaped like a giant seashell with ridges spiraling upwards. She used the water where she could in order to hold the sand in place, like a form. The difficulty was making sure that no extra water was getting into the sand. When finished, it looked like it was growing out of the shoreline itself. It's walls gently curved inward as they rose, creating an aerodynamic appearance. Instead of traditional turrets, she put coral-like spires at the top.

It had been so long since she'd built a sandcastle but Maeve was enjoying herself. It seemed like the stresses of late were washing away, or maybe Hayden was helping with the washing away... she did have water related powers after all. Maeve's base was made to look like the trunk of a tree, with roots looking like they were gripping the sand for stability. She sat in front of it twirling her fingers and moving her hands slowly to form the castle but this in more of a Celtic, naturistic style that she loved. It also reminded her of home as a pang in her heart rang true.

Once he got the foundation marked out precisely how he wanted it, Connor ran to the treeline and began hauling timber. The biggest pieces were deadfall trees, but there were quite a few smaller pieces that had clearly been split even if not planed and smoothed. After a dozen trips, he had set a neat pile opposite from his tool stack. Once everything was in place, he began placing the wood pieces into position, snapping them where necessary, forcing them in others, humming in odd numerical sequences as he tracked his mental picture and brought it into reality. As he worked, the 50 square meter foundation began to resemble a wood fort.

Hayden was forming another tower and the wall connecting it to the first one while filling in the inside of her castle with sand. She'd been so engrossed that she hadn't noticed Connor's until he snapped the timber. Startled, she looked up and cocked her head to the side. She was about to say something when she thought better of it. Instead of trying to figure out what he was doing, she considered what he could possibly be trying to teach them.

While the girls worked at their leisurely pace, Connor began dousing his wood fort with kerosene and covering it with sand, as much as would stick to the now slick timber. With at least a quarter inch of sand layered all throughout, Connor went back to his tool bag and rummaged around. He removed a welding mask and an oxyacetylene torch. The flame ignited at a blinding hot temperature. Connor quickly scored it back and forth across the largest pieces of timber, carefully ignoring the flames that shot up and down to the smaller pieces. Crackling smoke rose up as the timber was quickly devoured by the flash fire.

Her sandcastle had towers with nice pointed roofs, even a little engraining of what looked like tiles on it as well. She had left space for a little moat but knew that most likely the sand would just soak that back up. However, there was a little drawbridge Maeve had created for effect. She was still working on what was the main body of her castle but it was coming along nicely. "Do you often take out new team members for sandcastle building classes?" Maeve asked Connor.

Connor looked at Maeve long enough to shake his head before returning to his work. By now, the timber was burning away, which should have reduced his castle to a pile of ash. But the layers of sand that had stuck to the burning kerosene had been fused together into glass by the flash fire. Key joints had been reinforced by Connor's cutting torch and additional layers of sand. Far from perfect, the final effect was that the wood which had been totally consumed by the fire had contaminated the fused glass with its impurities. Rather than a clear crystalline structure, it was instead a pock-marked, opaque honeycomb of black and gangrene color, like an old liquor bottle fashioned into a Gothic castle ruin.

Stepping away from the structure that towered over his head, Connor grabbed more sandy muck and began flinging it everywhere. Several tosses later, the fused glass was almost entirely covered up, giving the appearance of a strong though likely very brittle structure.

"Ta... da!" Connor shouted, hands up in a boastful gesture.

Hayden finished the detailing on the walls, towers, and turrets with the occasional glance to Connor's castle. When he announced his completion, she turned to fully take it in. Her castle was nowhere the size of his. Nor was it as creatively built as his. What that what he was teaching them? To think outside the box? She finished the last detailing and stood. "That's amazing, Connor."

By then, Connor had cleaned off his hands and put his haptic gloves back on which connected to his speech-generating device. "THANK YOU," he signed. "NOW THAT I CALLED TIME, ALL CONSTRUCTION CEASES AND WE VOTE ON EACH CASTLE WITH THE ESTABLISHED CRITERIA OF SIZE, RESILIENCE, AND ATTENTION TO DETAIL."

Maeve turned and looked back at her own sandcastle. Just short of her height, towers rose with vine like design on the exterior and light brickwork. The other parts of the castle too had a vine-wrapped design and Celtic markings that fit in with her own background. There was a moat of sorts but no water and a little drawbridge that sat in place. It wasn't her first sandcastle but it was on American 'soil' and she wouldn't forget her heritage. "Your castles look great guys." She smiled as she looked at the other two.

After taking Polaroid snapshots of each sand castle, Connor started his testing.

"MY CASTLE IS EXPONENTIALLY BIGGEST," he began. "SO THAT CRITERION IS AWARDED TO ME. ATTENTION TO DETAIL IS MORE DIFFICULT TO DETERMINE FROM A DISTANCE, BUT UPON CLOSE INSPECTION, MAEVE HAS THE FINEST AESTHETIC DETAILS. THAT LEAVES RESILIENCE, A TEST I AM PREPARED TO ADMINISTER NOW."

Connor ran back to the shoreline, retrieved the hose he'd first used to wet down the beach area, and turned it loose on the three castles. He cranked the pump as hard as he could, delivering a strong enough PSI to start eroding the castles. While Maeve's ornate details washed away in seconds, her castle held up longer than Connor's. Despite the fused glass technique, the water pressure was too much for the brittle crystal structure. Connor's castle fell apart almost entirely while Maeve's was merely sunken in to its center with outer walls intact. Hayden's, for perhaps obvious reasons, withstood the watery barrage without a problem.

"HAYDEN'S CASTLE WAS CLEARLY MOST RESILIENT UNDER PRESSURE." Looking between the girls, Connor met them with a sly grin. "WE ARE EACH TIED, BUT THAT IS ONLY RANKED SEPARATELY. IF WE COMBINE OUR SCORES IN AGGREGATE, THEN OUR COMPOSITE SCORE IS PERFECT. WHEN WE WORK AS A TEAM, WE CAN ACHIEVE MORE THAN WE EVER COULD AS INDIVIDUALS."

"Huh, so that was the lesson," said Hayden, "teamwork. I'll admit, this was a fun way to teach it. It'll make the next Danger Room session neat, too. Call out, sandcastles!" She giggled. "But seriously, thank you, Connor, for the contest and lessons."

"YOU ARE WELCOME," Connor signed, glowing at Hayden's praise. "THERE IS ONE ADDITIONAL ASPECT TO THIS EXERCISE THAT I HAVE OMITTED." His hands signed rapidly, far faster than the device could render into speech. Before either girl knew it, Connor dashed off in a sprint. "LAST ONE BACK TO THE MANSION IS A ROTTEN EGG."

"What the....oh heck no! You sneak!" Hayden took off towards the mansion. Despite her regular runs around the grounds, there was no way she'd be able to catch Connor. She'd seen him in action and he could move.

Maeve chuckled and shook her head. "Yeah..." she waved a hand. "I'll catch you two up." There was no way she was running anywhere.