fandomtownies | Galactica Point, Thursday afternoon

Another boomerang shot out over the water, did a few circles around hers, and then looped around behind Dinah, where Sokka caught it again. "Not bad, not bad," he told her. "Everyone has to start somewhere."

Dinah had actually thought she was doing pretty good until she saw that. She still made a face at him before grinning. "I didn't start yesterday! But you're really good, yeah. When did you start learning?" Another z-zz-zzzzing out over the water, up and high, then coming back a couple feet away. "And did you get a lot of the harpies with that yesterday?"

When the forcast had called for Harpy free weather, Tully decided to give a day out with Mr. Twain another try. So he'd packed his fishing equipment, and saddled up.

He raised his brows when he saw what the kids were doing. "Well I'll be damned."

Dinah sent another boomerang soaring over the water, then tried to use her TK to bring it to her; hard when it was moving so fast. Still, it ended up back by her. That was something.

She waved to the older guy on the horse as he came closer, and zzzzing, another was sent spinning away. "Hi!"

"When I was, like, three," Sokka answered with a shrug. "I mean, I had just a toy wooden one until I got older, but..." He shrugged again. "I took out a bunch of 'em yesterday! Clipped their wings so they couldn't fly, and down they fell!" He beamed at her, carefully neglecting to mention the part where the fallen harpies chased after him.

That was kind of a consolation, starting so young. Sokka got an admiring look for the wing clipping, too. "Way to go! I ended up throwing CDs at them from the roof of Groovy Tunes. They worked pretty well, but of course they wouldn't come back."

Dinah picked up one of the Nerf boomerangs, and tossed it into the wind, watching it soar. "Do you see anything obvious I'm doing wrong?" Like throwing more with her shoulder than her wrist.

"Hi yourself. That's pretty impressive. Are you Australian?"

"Nope! New Jarsey," Dinah shaded her eyes and grinned. "Just having fun. Could've used them yesterday."

"CDs?" Sokka asked. "Really? I wouldn't think they were heavy enough to do any damage."

He watched Dinah carefully. "Well, yeah, there's a lot of little things you're doing wrong... The art of the boomerang is all about subtlety -- if you tilt it just the slightest bit off, it won't go where you want it to. But to start, you're throwing too much with your shoulder. You want to go for more of a whole-body motion, really -- feel the chi curl up inside you and then spring outward. Your body and shoulder move together to give you power, and then all the real action happens in the wrist."

"I used my telekinesis to make them go faster, and harder," Dinah explained, "And a lot of it was diversion, anyway. They'd get hit and then crash into each other, and start fighting. Or cuts on their faces or wings to mess them up."

She listened to what he was saying, and frowned, trying to relate it to what Professor Atreides was teaching her, since that was her closest reference point. "Okay. More with the arm," although it felt weird to her, "And... okaaaay. I think I know what you mean, but if you do it again, maybe I'll be able to see it."

"Oh Jesus yeah. Does that sort of thing happen often here?"

"Okay, like this, see?"

Sokka mimed throwing the boomerang a few times, slowed down so that she could see what he was doing. Not a fancy throw, just one to make it go out and come back. "One fluid motion, like that." He threw it, then, with exactly the same motion, and the boomerang zoomed out in a wide arc and came back to his hand.

Dinah could see about three things she was doing wrong, including the shoulder thing; her stance was too narrow, and she had it angled wrong, so she corrected that, then carefully imitated Sokka the best she could.

"Whoa!"

The boomerang went a lot further, angled that way, and came back almost to her. She did a little victory dance, and said, "Okay! Okay. So it all kinda, works together, right? It's not an arm thing. I'm not real clear on the chi, but I think I get it. It's the, um, energy? Gah. I'm not saying it right." She gestured with her boomerang. "It's not the force, right?"

Dinah shrugged, looking rueful. "First time it's happened since I've been here. But I just got here in January. And people acted like it happens all the time. You haven't been here long either, I guess?"

"Just a few months. Maybe I should put some extra security around the lighthouse if things are gonna be attacking."

"I dunno. It kinda is the Force, or at least they're sort of similar. You'd have to ask one of the Jedis. The ninja people call it Chakra. It's... All life has energy, right? Life energy. My sister can use it to control water and make it do just about anything, but only certain people can do that. But everybody has chi. And that's what throws the boomerang. You guide it, but let your chi do the work. If you try to use just your muscles, they'll all work against each other and block the chi, and it'll be that much harder to make the boomerang do what you want."

Dinah frowned at the force/Force segue until she got what he was talking about; the same thing Tahiri had explained to her before, right. It was a bit to get her mind around, but... okay. Pretend it's gravity. Or light. Then... "Okay, soooo... you're kind of, guiding it, but you're working with it." She bit her lower lip, and confessed, "I'm not sure I'm getting it entirely, but I can try again. It sounds like I won't know I've got it until I've got it."

Dinah took a breath, and relaxed the way Professor Atreides told her too, keeping her concentration equally on her surroundings and on the boomerang in her hand; wind and sun and sand under her feet, and when she was relaxed enough, slowly stepped into it, swung her arm back and then threw.

"It kinda sounds like it," Dinah admitted. "The dorms were safe? And Caritas, I heard. I don't know how they do that."

"Really, it sounds like mumbo-jumbo to me, too," Sokka confided. "But it really does work."

When she threw the boomerang, he clapped. "Better!" he told her. "Much better!"

Dinah beamed at him, and managed to fumble into catching the boomerang when it came back. "Wooo! Yes! Thanks, Sokka! That works!"

Some of the problem might have been that Barbara was so used to doing these throws, she never even had to think about it. And the other part might have been the chair, Dinah realized. No way to show it *exactly* the way Dinah would be doing it.

"Okay, so it's not just me? Because Tahiri told me about the Force, and I just got confused. It's about living things, but she can sense things that aren't alive, and then it just got weirder."

Sokka raised an eyebrow at that. "You're not knocking a Jedi, are you? Because they can seriously mess you up. I mean, besides the whole Force mojo, those lightsabers are totally badass. It doesn't HAVE to make sense, if it WORKS."

"Oh, I'm not knocking them. I saw her and Ben face off with light-sabers, I'd give anything to have those reflexes." Dinah's expression settled into 'perplexed.' "But the bits about not using it when you're angry, or not getting angry, and how it works-- I guess even they don't know, maybe? From what Tahiri said." She shrugged, not particularly bothered. "And you're right, it works for them, 'cause they're Jedi. And it can't for me, I guess, so, no worries." She grinned suddenly, and said, "Barbara let me have the boomerang she designed."

Reaching down to her pile of goodies, she pulled out the bat-a-rang (http://www.birdsofpreyonline.com/codex/images/items/batarang.jpg).

Sokka squealed with glee. "OOOH, a BIRDIE!!! ...Does it really handle at all well?"

Dinah glee'd and said, "Watch this!"

She threw it more like a frisbee than a boomerang, and it went zooming off at speed down the beach, then arced around to curve back, hitting the sand and sending up gouts of sand before landing at her feet. "That's me, throwing it, Barbara can get such better lift to it, want to try?"

Sokka grinned. "I'd love to!"

He picked it up out of the sand and hefted it, testing its weight. Then he ran his fingers over its surface, trying to gauge the aerodynamics. And THEN, he hauled off and let it fly. It was a simple test flight, just out and back, and he caught it smoothly out of the air. "AWESOME. It's got a bit of zing to it, doesn't it?"

"Maybe even Harpies don't want to deal with Zombies?"

"It really does! Barbara tried to explain it to me, but it was all technobabble and over my head-- I think it's something special with the alloy." Dinah reached out and pressed a little button, and shining red lights lit up along the wings and the eye. "For night use!"

"Can you blame them?" Dinah shrugged. "I've smelled them. Harpies are worse, but zombies aren't great either."

"I mostly try to ignore the zombies." Tully admitted. "I've seen one or two zombie movies. Enough to make me less than comfortable around them."

Galactica Point, Thursday afternoon

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