Training had continued for about a month. Her own progress had been slow, but not unremarkable.
They had trained her in firearms. Of course, Magara's aim was atrocious, but she learned her way around a few guns, their parts, how to load them, how to clean them, and how to fire them (always with a guiding hand to be sure she was at least facing the cardinal direction of the target). She supposed that in the field she could aim at a cloud-of-emotion… but, unable to distinguish individuals at a distance she thought such a strategy would be to risky. So did her trainers. She was not supplied with any firearms for the mission, instead they equipped her with a modified walking stick. Retractable, black instead of white, and made of a much sturdier metal than the old one. Perhaps they thought she would do better with a familiar object.
They trained her in combat. They did not allow her to enjoy any more of Brooke’s dust, she was sure she would have been hopeless without it. Yet they taught her where to put her feet, how to put her hands in a proper guard. They worked a lot on her form before they put her in a few practice-rounds where her teachers went easy on her. Sometimes they put her in the ring with Vita so that Magara would use her other non-empathetic senses to detect an enemy. Who knows, perhaps one day she would be fighting robots instead of people. There was also the matter of these living-tattoos, Magara was unsure if she would be able to sense them.
They trained her to control her powers. In this she did not work closely with her fellows as the nature of her power was so different. She would go off by herself and do the breathing exercises they taught her, then find one of them to try her powers out on. She would try to block them out, or extend the range of her senses. This is actually where she made the least progress over the past month. More than once she found herself retreating to soon and falling apart.
They trained her in crime investigation. This was enjoyable for Magara, it was more studious than the other types of training. When people were thinking hard their emotions tended to pacify, and the company of her teammates was more bearable. They learned methods of collecting and organizing evidence, identifying suspects, the kinds of questions to ask witnesses… things like that.
Her own costume was a dark black and purple jumpsuit of sorts, loose but not so loose as to get caught in anything, it buttoned on one side of her torso giving her a few pockets inside the suit. Her hair and her face were wrapped up in a matching bandana of sorts, the cloth came down over her eyes and left only her small nose and pursed lips exposed to the open air. Carl, her guide-dog, was along for the ride his own harness colors matching her’s, he had a small dog-shaped face-mask as well… his training consisted of convincing-him-not-to-paw-at-his-face-mask.
Magara came to the plane a bit late because of Carl, she want to make absolutely sure that his ‘business’ was taken care of before the long flight. Magara was more worried than Carl about this mission, he had been on many aircraft trips in the military. Magara appreciated the dog’s calm demeanor, scratching him affectionately behind his ears as he guided her to the ramp.
As she walked halfway incline toward, then stopped in her tracks, turned right about, and walked toward the bottom of the ramp. She knelt there beside Carl and stroked his neck. Carl had his ears forward, suddenly alert as he realized that something inside the aircraft was distressing his dearest human. He growled in the back of his throat.
Inside the aircraft was hot-and-cold, rage-and-spite. Magara was disappointed by her teammates, the mission had not even begun and some argument had escalated this badly? The intensity of it had stunned Magara, she felt her hands shake, it was only getting worse inside.
“I… I don’t think I can go in there right now…” She told Carl. She had spent the past month trying to control her powers, like learning how to turn the volume on a stereo up or down, with little improvement. She tried her breathing exercises now anyway. Breathe in for seven-Hold for seven-Breath out for seven-
It wasn’t only the intensity that bothered her, but she feared violence might actually erupt between her comrades. A fight in an aircraft, in the air, between super powered titans would be the worst time for for such a thing to happen.
“I’ll just, wait for them to calm down.” She reasoned with the dog, Carl tilted his head and licked her face. “It would be better for them to calm down first… Or they can leave me behind. I’ll probably get in the way…”
