aterat | [Closed] It's A Matter Of Scale

“Okay! That sounds good to me.” He smiled a little, excited to add something else to the list of things he might learn from Nida. “I used to look around the grey building a lot when I got here. I was the only one there at first!” So he’d broken in to a lot of the apartments just out of curiosity, and doing his own weird little check of the place to see if there was anything dangerous hiding to worry about. He’d stopped once other people started moving in, though.

Mostly because that would have been a scary and awkward interaction…

The question got a quick nod as he held up the chalk bag. “Yeah! I got it out of my pockets before I hid my coat.”

“Well, we’ll see about showing you some of the methods I know,” Nida answered, thinking about his own apartment. Perhaps he wouldn’t show the boy all of them. Better to let the boy puzzle some out on his own, because it made them more secure if people didn’t know about them. And Nida wanted to hide some of his own in his apartment and house better.

“Good,” Nida answered. Finally he led the boy outside and around to the side of the building. Here the stones had clear space between each level, and he was happy to show off how to properly climb from here. “We’re going to start with really short climbs, and I’m going to make is super safe by putting in some ropes and pitons. Are you willing to wait here while I go up and do anchors for you?”

Mono would happily take whatever lessons Nida wanted to give him, so he would be eager to learn, regardless. Even if it came down to small tests to see if he could work things out for himself, he was resourceful enough to at least try.

Following Nida out around the side of the building, curiously glancing up as they went. Ropes and pitons? Very used to climbing up whatever he could find to make the job easier. This was an interesting way of going about it. But he supposed if this was a lesson, Nida would want to make sure it was safe… At least that’s the impression he was getting off of people in general where him doing things here were concerned. “I guess so? Is there anything I should do while I wait here?”

Well he was happy that the boy thought to ask, because Nida did have something he wanted Mono to do.

“I’m going to have to free climb to get the things in positions I want. So what I want you to do while I climb is watch me. You won’t use all the same hand and foot holds because of height differences, but seeing how I test them before leaving my weight to them can be helpful. Promise you’ll watch carefully?”

Watching to see how Nida climbed up without the ropes and stuff, testing his weight… Yeah, that sounded pretty important to him. He still sometimes makes bad choices and guesses when scrabbling up walls, so it would be a good lesson. “I can watch real carefully, promise!” He responded honestly as he stood back to make it easier to look up the wall and watch Nida work.

Just make sure not to tell his husband, Mono. Ignis would no doubt fret over this behavior. As it was Nida smiled and pulled off his gloves. For this level of training he wanted to make sure that his hands were free and bare to better feel the stone.

He started by standing back to look over the wall, and while he did so he did a running commentary to Mono so the boy would understand what his reasonings were on the route that he was outlining verbally. He even acknowledged that no plan was set in stone (which made him chuckle), and then he moved to the wall and started his careful climb.

Mono had definitely been realizing after a few recent conversations that sometimes it was best to not tell Ignis about some things. The man definitely would worry… So the secret was safe with him.

The child listened carefully to the commentary while he watched Nida scaling the wall. He even asked a few curious questions about what one should do in certain situations if he made a mistake. It was useful information, after all. Mono was definitely an attentive student, and this was a little easier for him to follow than other things he had to figure out in this world.

But one thing was for sure, Nida definitely knew what he was doing.

Yes, Ignis worried. And that was alright. Nida didn’t mind that his lover worried. In fact, he very much appreciated that most of the time. But the fact of the matter was that he truly had been doing this more than long enough to be certain. So he looped the rope around his shoulder so he could play it out the way he wanted it to, and then he started up the wall. He made careful pauses, and always made sure that he’d stop with one free hand so he could put in a spike to anchor a carabiner on and then go and advance. He stopped when he was about two stories up and perched on a wide overhang from a window.

It was nearly a foot wide. He could dance on this thing.

“Give me a moment and I’ll come back down.”

Mono just wasn’t really good at handling people worrying. He needed to get a little more used to that. Too used to running around doing things that most people would consider dangerous, which included climbing tall structures and finding creative ways down said structures.

But the kid watched what Nida was doing carefully, having never really seen climbing like this before. His eyes wide, entirely fascinated as he watched Nida get the spikes in place to set things up. At the other’s words he nodded quickly, “Okay!! I’m not going anywhere.” He added, just so Nida knew he wasn’t going to just run off.

Mono was too curious about how Nida would get down, and what might come next in the lesson to get bored enough to wander away.

Being worried over wasn’t a strong spot for Nida either, until the last few years. It had been strange, and learning to adapt was not easy.

For down, Nida had options. HE could go back down the way he had set up for Mono. He could rappel down on the line he’d brought up. Or…

“Hey Mono? Don’t do what I’m about to do.”

Good thing Ignis wasn’t here. His husband would not approve of the swan dive into a somersault to land, dispersing all of that energy and the force from the fall into the roll and other movement. This was something he was trained in after all, and he had Siren’s magic to back it up for him.

“And this is where I say ‘don’t do that at home.’”

Don’t do what he was about to do? What was he about to do? There were a lot of things Mono had already done that adults didn’t really like the ideas of kids doing… So he was definitely curious.

Watching Nida take a dive off the ledge and end with a very impressive somersault, though? The kid was definitely a little awed by that, if his eyes were anything to go by. He definitely had jumped from high places he probably shouldn’t have before… But he definitely would have fallen gracelessly and likely injured himself from that kinda night, and he definitely didn’t know how to land the way Nida had.

“Wow!!” escaped the kid first as he moved over to where Nida had landed. “I don’t think I would be able to do that if I tried. I think I’d just go splat.” He commented with that awed, small tone. “So I won’t… But how’d you do that?”

"You would go splat. You'd get hurt. So don't do what I did," Nida insisted. The third time should hopefully make it stick.

"The secret to surviving long falls without getting hurt is that you want the movement to continue as much as you can past the reaching the ground. If you can keep the force moving, you can dissipate it over a longer period, which means you get hurt less."

“Yes, sir.” He responded with a nod. Hopefully, it would stick. But kids were foolish sometimes, and also Mono had already fallen off the side of a building here… It was useful to keep this lesson in mind!

“So just keep moving instead… Okay. I’ll keep that in my head if it happens… It happened a lot in my world, sometimes I had to jump really big gaps.” But he also had help before Six was kidnapped. She always caught him and pulled him up. Because she jumped first, she was better than him at jumping long distances.

"Well then, I'll have to help you learn how to roll after a jump," Nida noted. But for now... "We're going to start with the climb thought. But I'm going to wrap the rope around you so that if you call, I can catch you with it."

Mono would definitely appreciate that lesson, because jumping sometimes was necessary… Not here, of course, but where he was from? It came up a lot. Still, he listened to the instructions carefully. “Okay? I guess that’s good for practising.” And maybe he could learn something from that, maybe start carrying things around for climbing if it came up.

Jumping was necessary sometimes. But today would not be that day.

"It's safety, until I can evaluate how you're doing. It's better not to free climb if you're unskilled."

With that Nida moved forward to show Mono the ropes and explain the way that he was going to build him something like a harness.

Mono nodded, “Uh-huh, that makes sense… I know I’m not as good as you are, so I guess you gotta figure out where I’m at first…” But the kid was also extremely keen to show Nida what he could do, hoping to impress the man perhaps and hoping that he was at least somewhat better than expected.

But to do that, he knew he had to let Nida show him how this whole rope harness thing worked. So he paid strict attention to what the man said and did during the explanation.

"Exactly," Nida answers with a grin. Kid's fucking smart. Nida was liking him more and more.

Once the harness was ready and braced around Nida's waist and he hauled on it to show Mono how it would feel to put his weight on the rope alone, he nodded to Mono.

"I'll feed you a lot of slack. So you don't have to worry."

Mono let Nida test it, and nodded a little as he got an idea of how that would feel like. Once he felt a little more sure, he glanced up at Nida eagerly. "So... Now do I get to try climbing?" Mono really was excited to try climbing the way Nida had set things up, and he'd been very patient with all this explaining and safety stuff.

"Now you get to try," Nida agreed with a smile. "Remember, careful. And if your hands feel slippery, you should reach into your chalk bag and dust the tips of your fingers in it."

With that he prepared to brace. Go kid, go.

Mono turned excitedly to the wall at that the confirmation, he didn’t need to be told more than once! “Okay! I’ll be careful!” Said with all the sincerity of a child who was just eager to get started on something.

He moved for the wall and paused, glancing at the chalk bag and making sure it was easy to get his hand into if he needed it… Then, once satisfied, he was away. Mono was very good at pulling himself up, stronger than he looked considering how small he was, and he had a knack for picking his next grip hold as he went. More focused on going up than he was with things below him, if only because looking down in his world was a bad idea. You slowed down? Bad things happened.

The harness was still a little distracting, though, and remembering that he had a chalk bag was not something he was particularly good at. He’d never had one before, so it took an almost lost grip and a near tumble from the wall for him to realize that it might be good to remember.

Yes, remembering was good. Nida almost gasped at the near fall. If he hadn't had the slack taken up at the moment, he might have panicked. As it was he carefully kept the line just tight enough for a catch.

"It's okay, you're doing great, Mono. Just keep thinking up."

Mono was doing just that, learning from the slip up and chalking his fingers as he kept working his way towards the top. He did call over his shoulders, again without looking down, “I can do that! I am almost all the way up!” He smiled to himself, feeling quite pleased with himself.

This was fun, honestly. Climbing was always fun when there wasn’t something dangerous around making you climb. Six hadn’t always understood that. She preferred to let him do the climbing if it wasn’t easy stuff, but she did boost him up if he needed a little extra height to get the first handhold.

Well that's amusing. Nida smiled as he watched the boy work.

"When you get up there, I'm taking a picture with my Tell Phone."

Mono had quite forgotten they could do that with the Tell Phones, but then again he didn’t use his much because of the complications he found he caused it. That aside, he was just excited to be doing something like this.

Maybe with one or two more clumsy moments and remembering his instructions, he made it all the way to the top with a victorious little wave and one of his little soundless laughs. “I did it!” He turned his head finally to look down to see Nida, wondering if he’d done well and if the man might be proud of his attempt.

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