[IO] Much Too Long

Clash followed her outback and upon arrival, he reached into his jacket's pocket and pulled out the disc. He pressed his paw against the small device's button, it began shifting and sliding until it returned to full board size. He let it fall from his hand, and before touching the ground, it stopped in mid-air. "Alright... Now I just gotta get on very carefully..." He said softly, placing one foot on the board's surface. He then raised himself up and place his other foot on it. "Alright... I-I think I got it..." He said nervously, his board wobbling slightly.

Crossing her arms, Jayne just smiled. "Coincidentally, have you ever ridden any other type of board before? It might help." With a tail-flick, she walked around the now-floating hedgehog, peering at the board. "If you're gonna stand like that, you should put more weight on the back leg. Or, even better, move so you're in the middle, hindpaws shoulder width apart, body facing the side, head forward." While speaking, she reached into a jeans pocket.

Clash listened to his friend's advice and shifted his weight on the board, starting to feel a much better balance. "Alright... I got the balance down. How does it move forward?" He asked, trying not to throw off the balance he had just gotten. Balancing on this required a lot of attention, which is something he wasn't very good at giving.

Jayne tilted her head. "This is why I asked if you'd ever ridden any other kind of board before. So...?" Blinking, she removed a square device from the pocket she had been reaching into. With the press of a button and with a spin, she soon stood before a sleek silver-and-cyan board lifted by powerful thrusters, awaiting Clash's answer.

"Nope... I'm a novice at this." Clash said, not so wobbly now. He looked at Jayne's board and whistled, looking her's over. "So if mine is an SK-49 Power-Type, what kind is yours?" Clash asked, curious about what his friend's board was like. Knowing her, he was willing to bet it was either speed or flying.

"O...kay, then. Well, we can still work with that. Your board's thrusters will usually try to keep it upright all the time, a certain distance from the ground. Unless you run into something really hard it isn't gonna change too much from that until you turn it off. So going forward is a matter of leaning forward so the thrusters compensate." The kitsune hopped onto her own board. "This is a heavily modified TSB-17, which is a hybrid Fly-Speed, but I prefer to call this board Diamond Duster." She glanced around, tails slowly waving.

Clash blinked at just how much care Jayne had put into her own board. "Woah, this is something you can really get into." He said, looking at his own board. "I think I'll call mine... Obsidian Shooter." Sure, the name sounded silly at fist. But a black colored board that was weaponized went well with said name. "And so I just ever-so-slightly tip forward..." Clash said, slowly leaning forward as the boosters on the board co-operated, inching him forward slowly.

The vixen smiled softly, again transported from the time and place by thoughts of experiences gone by with said board. And once more, said daydreaming was interrupted by her friend speaking. "Hoverboard mechanics have a pretty good business since there are so few, since it takes a lot of doing...they're possible to mass-produce but repairs and custom jobs generally have to be done by paw." Another blink as he christened his board, and Jayne also leaned forward, though she leaned a bit more, as well as inwards, and so made slow circles around Clash as she watched. "Yes...looks like you have that."

Clash looked up and nodded excitedly, his face lightened up like a child on Christmas morning. "So is there a course we can race around? Or some basic area we can try going at so I can get the basic mechanics of it down?" Clash asked, eager to get the hang of it so he could really bring it around full-throttle.

"Yes, yes there is...though we'll wait on racing until you have more practice." Leaning forward a bit more, Jayne led over the crest of the hill, revealing a dirt oval in the dip between that hill and the next. The wild grass of the area remained in the area around, but this ring cut a complete circuit. "It's less than not much, but it should work for a basic path." She continued downhill, using gravity to her advantage, and pausing at the edge of the track.

Clash, whom now had a much better grasp of the physics of the board, followed up behind. The style in which the gear was done was basically an air version of just a skate board. Something he had done plenty of times. He just had better turning, and a more gentle control. Which, made it an improvement over the skateboard. "Alright, what's a good thing to get started?" He asked, eager to get racing as soon as he could.

Jayne just gave a wide grin. "Laps. Lots and lots of laps." She tilted her head. "Also, are you totally sure you haven't used any kind of board before? You seem more comfortable than someone who's totally new..." Starting slowly, she began drifting around the oval.

"Well, I did skateboard quite a bit back in the day. Before I was made into a G.U.N pet project." He said, wobbling on his board. He tried leaning forward to go faster, and the thrusters didn't like the sudden change in direction. He rocketed forward and off his board, face planting and sliding for about ten feet. As he came to a stop, he lifted his head and spit out a chunk of dirt. "I was never actually that good at skateboarding, though..." He said, brushing dirst off his jacket as he stood up.

"Hmm..." As customary for her, Jayne thought a bit before continuing, though for longer than usual at this point. "I don't mean to reopen old wounds, but I don't recall exactly whether we've ever exchanged our unhappy origins..." It was about this time that he went flying, though, so she moved up to help him up...except, of course, that he was already getting himself up. "You okay? And should we go ahead with those stories while we go...?"

Clash wiped the dirt off of his jacket and then looked up at Jayne, surprised she was so open with him. It may not seem like a lot, but in his eyes, that was a very large display of trust. "Sure. I do enjoy a good origin story. Would you like to go first or are you more comfortable going after me?" He asked, his mind lingering of what Jayne's history would be like.

Jayne looked back in silence at first, a certain coolness entering her icy blue eyes. "There's not a whole lot of good in mine, sadly, although as far as I know that goes for both of us..." Adjusting her stance slightly, she slid and shifted into a position where she lay back on her board, still floating slightly by distributing her weight evenly. "I guess I can go first, though I'll probably break it up bit by bit so we get practice as well. Eleven or twelve years ago, when I was little, I lived on Earth, the place the humans come from...and, as weird as it sounds, I think I was human then too...or at least disguised as one. My mother may have had something to do with it, I don't know, I don't remember her being there much...my father was a high-ranking military official and busy a lot. Jaye and I were both kinda bright for six, but still...I was young. I found a shiny stone one day, and then I was...well, basically kidnapped by figures wearing full black and they knocked me out with something. Woke up behind prison bars with no clue of where I was..." However, she leaned up just a bit, lazily drifting forward, glancing over to Clash for any thoughts so far.

Clash looked at her, listening intently. The whole concept of changing one's entire being was a really interesting concept to him. It sounded like something out of a story book. "Why in the name of Chaos would someone take you for finding a rock? What kinda stupid logic is that?" He said, irritated by the concept of the people who took Jayne. "Erm... Sorry. Please continue." He said, clearing his throat and re-adjusting his jacket.

She crossed her arms. "The name Chaos Emerald means something to you, right? I think it was a 'rock' like that, except on Earth instead of here. But...yeah. I woke up jailed, and pretty much isolated...they shocked me with a device at some point, and it was like a disguise flickering out as I returned to being a kitsune like I am now, albeit much younger and only two-tailed. They were about to take me, but then an middle-aged human intervened, and apparently he had some kind of authority that made the rest listen. I can only guess they did some kind of DNA testing, but he recognized me and said I was a...I think it was first cousin removed two or three times. Anyway...he gave a me a choice of being a test subject or a trainee for his organization...he also gave me to understand that I would be more likely to be okay if I trained. In retrospect, I suppose that's true, but it wasn't a much better fate. I started immediately, in somewhat comfortable quarters, with a whole class of trainees, and we started studying all sorts of things and training with weapons immediately..." Again the vixen paused, since she'd held the floor for quite some time.

Clash listened intently, hearing the story. As she continued, it began to sound more and more relatable to him. "If you were trained to utilize weapons, how come you use light magics for fighting?" Clash asked, curious as to how she got those powers too. He was pretty aware that all kitsune had some elemental energy to an extent, but he wondered how exactly they found it.

Jayne blinked and frowned.  "...that part is a little more fuzzy in my memory.  I think I started discovering and working on that natural capacity by accident, but not as much until I arrived on Mobius and happened to meet the right people.  Except for a certain part near the end of my stay there, but we'll get there.  ...anyway, you'll know by the end of this story just why I prefer to not use conventional weaponry.  Speaking of which, in reference to the class, since we were doing just about everything together, many friends were made, and I was seen as mature for my age, which I suppose I was.  I learned the book knowledge quickly, which went okay.  We did live fire at targets in simulations...over time it became more realistic, and exposing a six-year-old to basically FPS games is not something I recommend...that didn't go so well, though we also played live games with stunning ammo in a big training area that could be configured to different settings.  ...and then there was the part that was unique to what we were doing.  This might have seemed like even some kind of twisted military training for the very young, except for the last part.  Anti-interrogation training.  Counterintelligence.  The capacity to resist and confuse captors, and eventually escape from them.  You see, this agency, one which reaches many of the worlds known to humans, is called the Nexus.  Its emblem, a green atomic model.  And we were being trained, basically, to resist torture by being tortured."

"Nexus...?" Clash said, the word was alien coming from his mouth, but he was sure there was some form of meaning behind it's name. "What does Nexus do, exactly? I can already tell they may not be exactly the best groups around in terms of morality." Growing up, Clash was lead to believe there was only good and bad. He didn't know there were so many different ins and outs about the scale of justice as well.

She growled at the mention of the name again, and very nearly began an angry outburst but checked herself. After a couple deep breaths, she continued. "The Nexus calls itself a black-ops organization. Generally in the field of espionage, though really any sort of things that would cause trouble or scandal if they came to light. Publish themselves only to some high-ups and hire out, but always to support their own interests." Jayne growled again. "I'm pretty well convinced that the Nexus, or should I say its coalition of directors, has domination over everything as their eventual goal - and not only do I have a bone to pick with them for that, but their methods are straight-up evil. Unfortunately, their access to cutting-edge technology enables it. One of the examples of 'torture training' was having nails or claws pulled out and regrown...another, being skinned and then restored, having to not crack under the pressure...I thank the heavens that much of it has been blocked out by my subconscious..." She glanced away, silent, not quite ready to begin speaking again.

The hedgehog didn't have anything to add to it. She sounded like she was having some really awful callbacks. Clash placed a hand on her shoulder and gave her a re-assuring squeeze. "Hey, it's alright now. You don't have to go on if you don't want to. I can share my story, and you can tell the rest of your's when you feel a little more a peace, alright?" Clash said, a calm tone of gentleness in his voice that he didn't usually have. Jayne was almost always calm and collected, and seeing her like this pained him.

With a heavy sigh, the vixen shook her head. "...thanks for offering, but...how about I finish? The story doesn't get even start to get better until the end..." Without even waiting for a response, she went on. "This went on for a while, getting more intense as it went...those who didn't keep up disappeared, but I more than kept up...I learned and understood, and unfortunately obeyed...I reached the top and kept it, in just about everything, yet it wasn't really fulfilling since I knew that I would be using the skills I had to destroy and disrupt...but I didn't really have a choice either. Two years after the class started, having forged bonds together, we were given a final test - we were told that we would individually run a course through the big training area, but this time with live weapons against realistic targets, and that the ten who got through the fastest with the most collateral damage would graduate to become full-time agents. I was isolated and brought to an entrance, and released with a few weapons with the expectation that I would find or be able to make more, since I had learned to weaponize many common objects with lethal force...the setting was a city in blackout with many obstacles, and in the near-darkness I lost track of how many targets I had taken down...eventually, rather battered and bruised, an eight-year-old vixen made it to the end and was congratulated for having done so well, so much that I suspected something was amiss..." Jayne paused. "Clash, take a guess at the climax of my story. I need to ask what you suspect to keep my heart-rate down."

"They tried to do something to you, didn't they? Anyone who could score that precisely and perfectly would be seen as a threat in the chain of command." Clash asked. It was a guess, and more than likely a wrong one. But using his own military back-ground knowledge, anyone who excels their higher-ups are put down. No questions asked.