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Who: Falcon, Pit.
What: *~*Private tutoring*~*
When: Friday, November 20th, after school.
Where: Falcon's ~~van~~ office with an awesome couch.
Rating: PG. Also Whit knows nothing about physics here we goooooo

So Pit still sucked at physics.

Falcon had hoped the study party would help, but the whole thing kind of degenerated into a big confusing mess. It was dumb and frustrating, and he kind of wanted to kick Max to the curb for trying to turn it into weight room time. No wonder he was failing the class. Again. At least the session had been a marginal success for a few of them, but Falcon felt bad that his well-intentioned efforts to clear up their current studies had only left some more bewildered.

At least Pit had his priorities straight. If anything, the Captain could give the kid points for trying. Initiative was always a good thing, and it always looked good at the end of the semester when he sat down to figure out grades. He knew Pit cared, and that was a good starting point.

Besides, what was another Friday afternoon? Once classes had ended, Falcon made himself comfortable at his desk, waiting for the inevitable knock on the door.

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Surprisingly enough, Pit wasn't all that reluctant to study. He certainly didn't understand the value of physics and complex equations and numbers that made no sense, but there was something nice about the concept of receiving undivided attention from his coach and teacher. He didn't get that often. The angel was determined to make Falcon proud of his ability to learn-

Oh, he hoped he could see this through! There was this twisting suspicion that couldn't be chased away. He knew from personal experience that learning physics was extremely difficult for him, and he needed to pay close attention if he wanted to defeat this monster of incomprehension that threatened his grades. This was a test, he told himself. It was important. Other students understood the mechanics of this subject. He should too. The reward in the end would be better grades, enlightenment, and Falcon's approval.

Just as scheduled, Pit stopped in front of the office door. He hesitated briefly to prepare himself before rapping a few times on the wood. The winged boy stood alert.

As soon as he heard the knock, Falcon hopped up from his desk and made his way to the door, answering it promptly. He stepped aside to let the student in before shutting the door behind them and heading back to his chair. the Captain had to admit, he preferred one-on-one sessions, if only because study parties turned into a repeat of class and that was always bad. He often wondered how anyone could learn anything in class, mostly because of all the fooling around that tended to happen.

Falcon gestured to his ~~AWESOME~~ couch, indicating that the student could sit there if he wanted. He took his own seat atop his desk.

"What can I do for you, kiddo?"

Pit took a seat on the couch in a delicate movement, his eyes choosing to head straight for Falcon as he got momentarily situated. "Well, I did want to try and clear these things up..." By 'these things', he meant physics- physics of all sorts of dynamics and mechanics and whatever they were called. It didn't help his learning process much to come from a magical world where most modern physics need not apply.

In contrast, Falcon was probably one of the only people in the history of ever to find a practical application to physics. It was necessary to understand all the equations and concepts when your job was building and maintaining a craft that needed to be designed to win. Knowing the numbers and figures of each track and how one's vehicle performed on the courses.

But at the same time, he could see why Pit was having trouble. The Captain had grown up fixing cars and plugging numbers in equations. Pit came from...Angel Land. He wasn't sure what kind of place it was, but he could make an educated guess that they didn't have physics.

He'd felt the same way when he'd first arrived at the Academy and learned that magic was, apparently, real. "Anything specific? Or just the whole shebang in general?"

Pit swallowed some guilt before admitting (without understanding what a shebang was), "Yeah. The whole sheebane." His eyes went to the floor and traced the terrain of it idly, trying to scrounge up at least what he did remember about physics during this final minute so that he wouldn't come across as a hopeless case in front of his teacher. Class had been today, and he'd paid extra attention for that very reason. However, as the case was for physics, the more Falcon taught, the more questions bloomed inside that little head of his, and if he were to shout every last concern out loud, the whole class would consist of Pit's "Captain! Captain! Captain!" The other students would have many reasons to see him in degraded lights.

It was easy to tell that Pit was rather embarrassed to be asking for help. Falcon couldn't blame him, really. He was in a class with the likes of Jeff and Lash and Ionia who were basically human calculators. Even Mac was starting to get the hang of it. Max, however, would remain a hopeless case forever and ever and ever. There was practically nothing anyone could do.

So he'd try his best to dispel that feeling right away. "You don't have to worry about coming to ask for help. I mean, that's what I'm here for."

Sure, Pit didn't quite get it, but Falcon certainly wouldn't call him a lost cause. He smiled. "I've seen hopeless cases. You're not a hopeless case."

A large portion of his fear had been eaten away. His insecurity, alleviated by Falcon's words, quieted down. A small smile alighted on his face and it became easier to look the man in the eyes.

"Hopeless cases like Max?" he joked.

Falcon almost laughed. Almost. He tried really hard not to and maybe kind of snorted a little bit. Because yeah, Max was a hopeless case but he wasn't supposed to talk to students about other students like that. It was just not professional, and Falcon, despite...not being terribly professional...had to uphold standards. Or pretend to uphold standards.

"Max comes to me for help, too." He shrugged. "That's the first step, really. Admitting you don't understand it."

"Yeah. Well, at least he does. But I think he's stuck on that step." He giggled. Pit knew Max had bad grades, but when he showed up at the tutoring session last week, it became plain as daylight why. Besides, giving someone like Max a bit of a hard time was fun, even if he wasn't present in the room to react.

Pit was right. Max was stuck, but Falcon had to keep trying, because that was his job. Even if they ran around in circles forever and ever. It was tragic to know that Max needed to pass the class to graduate but probably would never succeed.

But they weren't going to get anywhere talking about Max. Falcon stood from his desk and retrieved the physics textbook from the nearby bookshelf, then sat next to Pit on the couch, flipping it open to the table of contents. "You can pick what you want to go over first."

"Okay!" He scooted closer and peered into the list of curriculum, getting a little dizzy just by being reminded of the intense confusion felt by those topics. He mad a 'hmmmm' noise just so Falcon could tell he was thinking carefully.

He reached over to point out the one he hoped to clarify. "I was always having trouble with unit one... the one with motion. You know, about speed and velocity... um, acceleration... numbers just hurt my brain, so it would help if we took it a bit slower with me, I think. That might just be all I need!" Okay, he felt a bit better. "Thanks for spending time helping me out- I really appreciate it," he blurted with humility.

Well, that was easy enough. Hopefully once Pit got the basics straight, everything else would fall in place and problem solved. Falcon could hope, anyway. They'd take it slow and see how things turned out. Motion was the easy stuff, and if he knew anything about teaching physics, it was best to try and put the concepts in terms the student would understand.

"All you really need to know about velocity is that it has two parts: the speed part, and the direction part." He began, flipping to the appropriate pages. "It's how fast you change position. So the formula for it is how far you travel divided by the time it takes you to do said traveling."

"So... this is velocity, right?" He spun to the side and would have made a full pivot had he not been sitting down. Many feathers brushed abruptly against Falcon's face. Maybe Pit should have rotated the other direction.

Falcon didn't realize what he was doing until it was too late and he had wings in his face. He laughed and gently pushed them out of the way, standing from the couch in order to better demonstrate the technicalities of velocity.

"Well...not exactly. Velocity implies that you're moving from point A to point B, not just moving in one place." He rubbed his chin, thinking up an example. "Say I move from here...to here." Point B became his desk. "About two meters. And it takes me three seconds to get there if I'm walking slowly. So my velocity would be the distance I've covered--two meters--and the time it took me to cover that distance--three seconds. Two divided by three is about point-six-six-seven, so my velocity is point-six-six-seven meters per second."

A lightbulb clicked on inside Pit's brain and almost seemed to exude through his expressive blue eyes. He shot to the edge of his seat and cried, "Oh!! I get it!" It made much more sense! "So... let me straighten this out here... Velocity is really two numbers that are divided. So it's...distance divided by speed! Wow, I sure feel dumb now! I can't believe it was that easy!" His jubilation filled the area like a fireplace hugs the room with warmth- he was that invigorated by this epiphany. Physics just got one step less complicated!

Aha! A success. "That's exactly it." He grinned, sitting back down on the couch and taking up the textbook once more. "And acceleration is even easier than that. It's just the change in velocity." Of course, there were some technicalities and certainly wasn't that simple, but Falcon would consider the whole session a success if by the end of it, Pit at least understood the bare bones of the concepts. That would definitely make things much easier for the student.

"It's speeding up or slowing down. For the most part, anyway."

"Great! Got it." As he silently rejoiced some more, Pit clicked open his messenger bag and took out a small light blue notebook with 'notes' scribbled in careful straight-lined scrawls on the front. He flipped it to a blank page, clacked the butt end of his pen, and licked his lips as he brought his point to the paper and etched the equation for velocity very slowly.

He managed to do it correctly from memory, albeit with a little bit of brain strain. He pointed to it and gaped at him as if inquiring to Falcon whether he had it right or not.

For whatever reason, Pit's meticulous writing in his notebook was almost adorable. Falcon watched with mild interest as he slooooooooowly wrote it down. The determination and concentration with which he reproduced the formula was more than a little amusing. In a good way, of course. When he was finished, the Captain scootched a little closer to better see what he'd written down.

"There you go. That's it." Progress! Progress was always a good thing, even if it was just understanding the basic concepts. Better than trying to dive into the harder stuff without a good grasp on the essentials. "Not so bad once it's put in layman's terms."

He leaned back on the couch and adjusted his sunglasses. "I know this stuff is all probably really new and confusing to you." Physics was probably not a commonly-discussed subject in Angel Land. Wherever that was.

Pit's notebook rushed to his chest in one ardent sweep. "Is it ever!" he exulted with flashing eyes. "But with everything else new, I have to take it one notch at a time. Even if it makes my head dizzy." He laughed quietly.

Depressing his notebook from his body, he scribbled down the rest of what Falcon demonstrated for him in simple and easy-to-understand phrases. When he finished, he came up with a new question. "So, can you help me with this problem (http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~probs/mech/circ/Rotacc2/Rotacc2.html)?" he asked as he slanted over to retrieve one of his assignments.

"Sure can. Let me see." Falcon pulled the book onto his lap and studied the problem for a few moments, trying to figure out the best way to put it. It dawned on him that there might be one little technicality to clear up.

"Okay, so, since this is angular velocity, we're going to have to use pi. Do you remember what that is?"

He had a feeling the angel would start talking about dessert.

"Pie?"

Right on the money, Falcon.

He made a pie shape by tracing his fingers in the air.

He sighed, trying again not to laugh. "Not pie. Pi. Like the number Pi."

Like that was going to tell him anything. Pie was not a number. That was just silly. There had to be another, better way of getting this strange and frankly stupid concept through to him. Falcon rubbed his chin, contemplating exactly how to go about relaying the technicalities of Pi.

"It's spelled P-I. Three-point-one-four-one-five-nine-two-six-five and so on and so on. It's a number that never ends. We just shorten it to three-point-one-four. Anyway, if you've got a circle with a radius of one, the distance around it is Pi. It's just a weird mathematical thing that we memorize and use when we're doing angular velocity."

Nod, nod, nod. That's what he did as Falcon explained. Yeah, it made sense. "So you plug this number into a formula, right? And... say, what does angular velocity look like?"

"Yep."

He made his way over to his desk, rummaging around in one of his drawers. When he emerged, he was holding a shoelace and his car keys. Falcon elaborated as he tied them together. "Well. Velocity is actually something called a vector. All that means is that it has a direction. Like...you're moving three meters per second to the left."

With that, he began to swing his improvised apparatus above his head in a circle. "In angular velocity, the object is moving in a circle, just like this, so we need to factor in Pi."

Click went his active brain. He bumped his fist into the open palm of his other hand. "That's it! Pi is all about circles! Because in angular velocity the object is moving in a circle, we can't forget about Pi!" Okay, so he was basically reciting what Falcon just said, but there was something inside of him that allowed this piece of reasoning comfortable space. Then, he got distracted by one of the artifacts uncovered from the depths of Falcon's desk. "...Wait. Why do you have a shoelace in your desk?"

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