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Reestablishing Bonds, chapter 2

About a week after Max had returned, he said, "I'd like to take Conner out of Smallville for a week and give him some intensive training on how to better use his powers."

"Is there a reason you boys can't do that here?" Martha asked.

"There are too many distractions and too many people here," Max replied.

"I never thought I'd hear someone say there are too many people in Smallville," Conner said.

"There will probably be some very visible demonstrations of our powers," Max said. "I think that if anyone here saw us, it'd be more dangerous than where I want to go."

"Where's that?" Jonathan asked.

"The Rockies," Max said. "We can carry a phone or something for you to get in contact with us in case of an emergency."

"Why can't Clark do this?" Martha asked.

"Clark doesn't have telekinesis," Max said. "He's also never available to do it; something would always call him away."

"He's got a point, Martha," Jonathan said. "Clark is really busy."

"I don't know," Martha hedged. "I guess I'm worried that the two of you might get hurt."

"I took care of myself for several weeks just recently," Max pointed out.

"I also lived on my own for months before moving here," Conner said. "It was events that happened to me that were the reason I came here, not because I had difficulties living on my own."

"I think you boys will be fine," Jonathan said, clapping them both on the shoulder. "Martha, it's what they've got to do."

"I want you both to promise me that you'll call for help if you need it," Martha said.

"We will," Max promised.

Conner shifted the backpack he was carrying. It wasn't heavy, but it was full. Max was carrying a similarly full backpack.

"Good thing they had all this camping gear in storage, huh?" Conner said. "It was a bit dusty, but it was pretty easy to clean."

"There was a good amount of gear that I was unaware that the Kents had," Max said. "I suppose that Clark used it when he grew up."

"I didn't want to say this in front of the Kents, but you seem a lot more relaxed than before you left."

"In part, it's because I was able to take care of a few things that had been on my mind. However, there's a larger issue that I'm not worried about any more."

"What's that?"

"I'm not concerned about having Clark's approval."

"I...didn't know you were."

Max nodded. "I sought his acceptance. He had shown that he trusted me with some of his biggest secrets, and I wanted desperately to prove myself worthy of that trust. I'd still like his approval, but if I can lose it through no fault of my own, I'm not going to obsess over it."

"How come you don't obsess over my approval?" Conner joked, trying to lighten the mood.

"I do," Max responded. "You're the person that I'm closest to. If something were to happen to you...I don't know what I'd do."

"I'm not sure what I'd do if something happened to you. You're probably the person who best understands me."

The two flew to the Rockies and set up camp in a secluded area.

"What now?" Conner asked.

"We're going to work on your concentration," Max said. "Follow me."

Max led Conner to a waterfall. He then took off his clothes and waded into the water.

Conner looked skeptical. "You're not serious, are you? Meditating under a waterfall?"

"Your body will be numb, so you'll be able to better concentrate."

With a sigh, Conner removed his clothes and entered the water. It was cold.

"You really turned evil while you were gone and are trying to kill me with pneumonia, aren't you?" he accused.

"You'll be fine."

Conner and Max sat under the waterfall. Conner's teeth started chattering.

Max indicated a rock that was about three feet away from the edge of the water. "I want you to reach out with your power and move that rock."

"I can't do that," Conner protested. "My powers don't work that way. I have tactile telekinesis. I have to touch the object."

The rock floated off the ground before landing in the spot it originally rested.

"I can do it," Max pointed out. "We have the same powers. You can do it, you just don't know how. Yet."

"So, how do I do it?"

"Concentrate on the rock and see it move in your mind."

Conner thought about it. "It's not working."

"You're not concentrating hard enough."

"I'm naked and freezing under a waterfall. It's not easy to concentrate."

"Don't think about that. It's distracting you. Concentrate on the rock."

"I am. It's still not moving."

"Start over. Don't think about me being here. Don't think about your body. Focus only on the rock and it moving."

Conner bit back a rude remark and focused on the rock.

Conner lost track of time as he kept focusing on the rock. He became familiar with every piece of it, every scratch on its surface. He knew every detail about that rock. Still, it didn't move. Conner had focused so intently on the rock that he no longer paid any attention to the waterfall.

Conner hated that rock. It wouldn't move. He wanted to blast it with his heat vision, but that would be letting the rock win. He focused all his anger on the rock, trying to move it.

The rock remained still.

Conner's shoulders slumped. He felt drained. He mentally commanded the rock to move one last time, no longer angry at the rock or skeptical about his ability to do so. He just wanted it to move.

The rock twitched.

Conner's eyes widened. He commanded the rock to float. It did so. He had it move in the air, slowly at first, but gradually getting faster and faster.

He set it down on the ground and turned to Max, a beaming smile on his face. Max looked proud of Conner's achievement.

"Congratulations," he said. "You did it."

"All of a sudden, it was like this," Conner said, snapping his fingers (or trying to since they were wet). "I didn't think it would be like that."

"Now, move me," Max said.

Conner concentrated, and Max gently floated out of the water. He was trying to be careful and move him around too jerkily. Conner deposited Max back in the water.

"I did it!" Conner exclaimed with a smile.

"You did," Max said, returning his smile.

"Can I get out of the water now? It's freezing!"

Max nodded. "We can go back to camp."

The two dried off, got dressed, and headed back to camp.

"So, what's next?" Conner asked.

"For today, we're going to get a feel for the area by hiking around. I know what's on the maps for this area, but I think it's best if we see it with our own eyes."

Conner gave him a look. "You didn't think I'd managed it as quickly as I did."

Max shrugged. "One hour forty-three minutes was a little faster than I thought you'd learn it."

"How long did you think it'd take me?"

"A little longer."

"You're being evasive."

"Yes."

"Are you going to tell me how long you thought it'd take me?"

"I'll tell you later."

Conner sighed melodramatically. "I trust that you'll confide in me some day."

The two hiked around the area, getting to know what it was like. Max pointed out several edible and poisonous plants.

"I didn't know you knew so much about nature," Conner commented.

"I've had survival training since my creation," Max replied. "How do you think I managed to survive in the Alaskan base?"

"You're not telling me that you survived only on plants, right?"

"I did some hunting, though I supposed it might be more correctly called poaching. I was stronger and faster than the animals, so it was easy to obtain a source of meat. The tricky part was preparing it."

"You didn't eat it raw, did you?" Conner looked horrified.

"No, I didn't. I scavenged for flammable material and cooked it. However, it's very difficult to cook something evenly on a campfire. My first several attempts were barely edible."

"What's my next training task going to be?"

"Since you've meditated under a waterfall, I thought I'd move on to having you fight bears."

"You're not serious!"

Max cracked a smile. "I had you going there, didn't I?"

Conner gave Max an incredulous look and started laughing. "You really have changed. You wouldn't have dreamt of joking like this when you first moved in with me."

"Perhaps I have loosened up a bit."

The next day, Conner and Max hiked up a mountain. Max stopped on a relatively flat spot near the summit.

"We've got some privacy here," he said. "I want you to sit down."

Conner sat while Max placed a few rocks and other objects around him in a circle.

"Let me guess," Conner said. "You want me to move multiple objects at the same time."

"Very good," Max said. "You probably want to start by just getting everything up in the air, but I think you should be able to get all these objects to circle you in different orbits."

Conner counted the objects. There were seven of them. He floated one rock, and then tried to get another to hover. The first rock dropped.

"You need to split your concentration," Max explained. "It's a little tricky at first."

Conner tried again. The same thing happened.

"Would you do it?" Conner asked. "Maybe I can get a sense of how to do it from your telekinetic field."

Max looked skeptical. "Can you perceive it?"

"Not entirely, but I have gotten a sense of things when you and that older version of me were suppressing each other's powers. I also caught you using that technique on me some evenings."

Max looked guilty. "I just wanted to see if I could do it."

"What about when you did it under combat conditions? I'd say that would have indicated you could do it."

"Okay, you're right. I was bored. Doing anything visible would have gotten me a lecture. I could have done something with my body's processes, but you get upset when I do that."

"I don't even know where to begin with what's wrong with that last statement. Anyway, go make things float, and I'll keep my eyes and mind open."

Max glanced at the items and, one by one, they hovered in the air and started spinning around him in different orbits.

"Do you have a sense for it?" he asked.

"I think I do," replied Conner. "Let me try."

The objects stopped spinning around and deposited themselves around Conner. He fixed his attention on them. One of them floated up. Another began to float up, and the other began to drop. After a few moments of bobbing up and down, both of them hovered. A smile of relief passed over Conner's face.

He tried to get a third rock to join them in the air, but the two that were already floating dropped. Conner frowned.

"Try starting with just two rocks," Max said. "I'll want you to handle all seven, but it may take some time."

Conner pushed aside his annoyance and concentrated on two rocks. When he was comfortable with that, he moved on to three.

By the end of the day, Conner could comfortably manage to move four objects at once and was unsteady with a fifth.

After they ate dinner and washed up, the two were lying in their tent.

"This is harder than I thought," Conner said. "I'm sore."

"Sore mentally or physically?" Max asked.

"Physically. I think I might have accidentally had some feedback or something."

Max rolled Conner onto his stomach.

"Hey! What are you doing?"

"I'm going to give you a massage," Max explained as he started to rub his back. "Tell me where you're sore."

"A little lower...right there. Where'd you learn to give a massage?"

"The Agenda. Let's not talk about it. Your progress has been excellent."

"I haven't been able to move all seven objects yet."

"I didn't think you'd be able to do it in one day. You should consider this: one week ago, you couldn't use your telekinesis on an object unless you were touching it. Now you can move four different ones at a distance and have them move in different directions."

"How many can you move at the same time?"

"I don't know, I've never tried to continue moving objects until I reached my limit."

"You did a couple dozen in the Titan's Tower."

"Yes. I could probably do at least three times that if I wanted. However, if you keep this progress up, you're going to be near my skill level soon."

"That'll be good. Then we'll be on equal terms."

Max laughed. "Conner, don't be foolish."

Conner shifted to look at him and frowned. "What do you mean?"

Max returned to his side of the tent. "You're more powerful than me."

"What do you mean? We're equals!"

"Telekinesis is a psychic power. You put more feeling into it and can hit levels that I can't. I'm not wired that way."

"During the training with the JLA, you were consistently above me."

"I can consistently hit a high level, but I can't go beyond that. I couldn't disassemble every firearm in the greater Los Angeles area."

"You know about that?"

Max nodded. "The Groups had very complete files. I kept track of you."

"That's kind of creepy."

Max smiled apologetically. "I thought we might fight again."

"We did. We never finished it though. We were interrupted by cruise missiles."

"We should rest. Tomorrow is going to be busy."

Conner was able to move all seven objects by noon of the next day.

"Now what?" he asked.

"I thought we'd take a break for lunch and then spar."

"We do that back home. I thought the idea was to do stuff that I couldn't do there."

"Exactly. That's why we'll spar with all our powers."

Conner pointed at the meat on a skewer he was eating. "What is this? It tastes kind of different."

Max replied, "It's chipmunk. I caught it while you were training."

Conner started coughing, and Max smiled.

"I'm joking," he said. "It's canned meat. It's loaded with so many preservatives that it tastes odd."

"You need to work on your sense of humor! That wasn't funny!"

"I'm sorry, I couldn't resist."

"For that, I'm going to kick your butt when we spar!"

Max smiled.

The two fought after lunch. Conner had to be relentless because Max always seemed to dodge out of the way of his blows.

"Make controlled swings," Max commented as he dodged another punch. "You don't need to hit with your full strength all the time."

"Stop moving around!" Conner shouted.

"I don't think so. Are you ready for me?"

Conner barely got his guard up in time as Max unleashed a flurry of punches.

"That wasn't bad," Max commented. "It would have been better if you could have countered some of them rather than just blocking."

"Counter this!" Conner shouted as he charged Max.

As Conner closed on him, Max grabbed him and flipped him onto his back. Conner was surprised and got the wind knocked out of him. When he caught his breath, he saw Max's hand outstretched to help him up. He took it.

"Sorry about that," Max apologized. "I didn't mean to throw you with that much force."

"It's okay. I didn't want you to hold back. Looks like there's a difference in our skill levels, huh?"

"There is. You'll get better though."

The two continued sparring, and by the end of the week, Conner learned both new hand to hand moves and new applications of his powers.

On their way home, the two spotted a trail of smoke in the sky. They dumped their backpacks and sped off to investigate. Two planes had collided and were losing altitude.

"You get that one!" Match shouted, pointing at the one that was higher. "I'll get the other one!"

Superboy nodded and got under the plane. He pushed up, leveling the plane out and began to take it down in a controlled descent. He looked over to see how Match was doing.

Match had a harder task. The second plane was falling at a steeper angle and at a faster rate. Match grimaced. He could stop the plane's descent, but it would hurt the passengers inside. He also didn't like the way the engine was smoking.

Fortunately for Match, the Denver airport was relatively close. He brought the nose of the plane up a bit and aimed for the runaway. He was under the nose of the plane and gritted his teeth in preparation for the impact.

The impact did hurt, but his telekinetic shield not only protected him, but it reduced the damage to the plane. The plane skidded to a halt, ripping up that section of the runaway. Match took a look at the plane's engine. It was on fire now.

He ripped the engine off and flew up. He wasn't going to let it explode at the airport. Superboy brought his plane down in time to see an explosion in the sky. He searched the sky, looking for any sign of his brother.

"Come on, that explosion can't have killed you," he muttered to himself. "You're tougher than that, Match."

In a few moments, a slightly singed Match landed. "I wouldn't want to do that again."

"I'm glad you're okay," Kon said smiling.

Max returned the smile. "We did well. Let's get out of here."

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This chapter nearly ended up as its own story, but it couldn't really stand on its own.

The format of "Reestablishing Bonds" is similar to that of "Where Do We Go From Here?" in that it consists of self-contained, short stories.

Any and all comments welcome!