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Anna Anna freezes as Ms. Sanders calls her and Jean forward. Eyes wide, she tries to think of something the pair could do to the teacher, but all that comes forth is the sickening feeling of an uncontrolled fall and the still-fresh memory of truck striking van. It only gets worse when Jean speaks up and Blunt Trauma focuses her attention on the goth. "Ma'am, I'm scared," Anna blurts. A beat passes before she realizes she's spoken. "I'm scared about what happened last week, I'm scared of the things you're warning us about. I'm scared because I can't look at you with that thing on, without feeling like I'm drowning in the taste of fingernails on a chalkboard. You could smash all of us, except maybe Crystal, even with that thing on, and I'm scared I'm going to screw up and do something stupid if we come at you, and fall bad and end up in the shack or-- or worse." "And Ma'am, I know we're supposed to be scared, but I-- I don't get it. You just slamdanced Reggie so hard, they felt it in the Savage Land. We're not dumb, we know you've fought a lot. I honestly don't understand why you have to bounce us off the floor, while hurting yourself with that horrible thing."
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Jun 25, 2015 23:30
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Regina Reggie was in the midst of taking a moment to inwardly berate herself for seeing the danger inherent in attacking Trauma, but not really doing anything about it more clever than a sneak attack. Anna’s fearful plea interrupts her thoughts and she puts off her self-annoyed scowl immediately for a brave smile. “I’m okay, Anna,” she rolls an arm, hand on her shoulder as if getting the kinks out, “She didn’t really hurt us. Just pulled a muscle is all,” She crouches on one leg and extends the other with the other heel on the ground at full length as if just making sure to get properly stretched. She’s trying her damnedest to no sell being bounced off another girl at flying velocity, despite being sure she’ll feel aches in the morning, “I don’t think the point is to be scared. The point is to be smart. Bo’s super fast and I’m made of edged weapons and high tensile elastic, but….” She looks apologetically at Bo, “I’m sorry, I didn't think it through as deeply as I should have. You okay?"
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Jun 26, 2015 01:03
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Rickie The wheels are turning in Rickie's head. Almost literally, you could see them on her hat. She hopes she's reading the lesson plan correctly, but because Ms. Sanders came out as a teacher, not a drill sergeant... She steps forward. "Ma'am? I think I see what you're getting at. May we take this next match instead? Unless there's something really important we should know if we ever have to kung-fu a bird." The joke is mostly for Anna's benefit, Rickie hadn't quite understood how traumatic the car crash had been for the goth girl, and in lieu of more solid support which she couldn't give at the moment, the artist at least attempts to lighten the mood.
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Jun 26, 2015 09:20
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Elly "We're unlikely to succeed today," she agrees quietly. "But that's the point. It's a learning experience. Everyone has to start somewhere." Falling silent, Elly then watches the two girls' assault on their gym teacher. With the way her eyesight and brain work, what she sees is like a tableau of curiously measured violence unfolding largely in slow motion – to Elly, Bo moves as quickly as one ordinary human appears to move to another, but Regina's attack and Ms Sanders's immediate riposte both play out such that she can leisurely watch every single inch of movement either of them makes. And what she sees…it's a kind of beauty, really. The dinosaur mutant is all unbridled, animal grace, her human side giving way to the reptilian instincts that clearly are so much closer to the surface in her than they are in other people; in that moment, her intent and its execution seem primal and unembellished, born of the same simple need to kill and eat felt by her saurian kin millions of years ago. The way their gym teacher responds to Regina's lunge, though, is something else still. It's just as instinctive in a way, without a hint of hesitation, without any sign that she has to think about what she is doing. But where Elly's housemate seemed to eschew finesse in favour of raw force, Blunt Trauma's moves are sparse, the picture of focus and efficiency, and seem to have comparatively little to do with physical strength; certainly they don't require any mutant powers to execute. To Elly, it's clarity of thought made physical reality. (Not that she'd expect this to make sense to anyone else.) But more importantly, it's an answer, something that just might resolve the worry that has been eating away at her ever since her escape: the question of what she could've done that day to avoid killing anyone, to avoid injuring any bystanders. That concern has been with her all week, rarely dwelt on consciously and not spoken of to anybody, actively repressed at worst lest that still-fresh wound be ripped wide open again – but now, watching a de-powered Ms Sanders dispatch two attackers with minimal effort and great precision, using nothing but her bare hands, it occurs to Elly with great clarity that this is what she should've been capable of, that it's what she must come to be capable of, going forward. She's never going to be at peace with herself otherwise. "You might not, Gabrielle, but I want to be able to do what Miss Sanders just did," Elly murmurs. "If I had that kind of skill, I wouldn't have ruined the one day of freedom the others had earned. Everything that went wrong last week wouldn't have." There's just a slight waver in her voice as she says this, though the look she gives the grumpy goth is fairly intense. "If you're not game for this, that's fine by me. I'll give it a shot on my own if she lets me. If you are game, we ought to coordinate." She glances at Blunt Trauma while continuing to talk to her partner. "I don't know what exactly you can do with your fire, but try to keep her off-balance and as close to blind as possible. Without actually injuring her eyes or anything, mind you." Elly stares straight ahead for a few seconds after saying this, clearly somewhere else altogether. "Meanwhile, I'll move in and attempt to trip her up. As soon as she hits the ground, we both need to secure her arms behind her back." She blinks. "It's highly unlikely things will work out like this, of course. If she ends up on the ground at all, that'll be a decent start. And if she doesn't, at least I'll be more likely to get punched in the face than you." Hearing Jean and Anna talk about the effect the car crash had and continues to have on the winged Blue only strengthens Elly's resolve, in addition to causing that familiar feeling of unease to gently claw at her guts. She knows Anna doesn't blame her for what happened, and it's probably safe to assume the other Blues don't blame her either, but none of this changes how she feels about it all. Suddenly at a loss for words, Elly leans forward a little and tries to catch Anna's eye, giving her housemate a shy, half-smiling look meant to convey the emotions that have briefly taken hold of her – guilt, regret, and concern, with a hint of feeble encouragement. It's little, but it's all Elly can manage right now.
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Jun 29, 2015 06:46
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"I'mokay!" Bo announces, in case anybody was worried, and takes Ms. Sanders' hand to help herself up. Rather slowly. For her. It was about normal speed for everybody else. But Bo definitely looked a little roughed up. "I messed up too, shouldn't have stood still. And you're way heavier than you look Reggie." "Woah." Is all Gabrielle can say, as intense as Elly gets. "No, dude, I'm with you. Just saying, you know, we're going to get our asses kicked. Blunt Trauma's still Blunt Trauma." She helpfully clarifies. "Okay, yeah. I dunno if you can even knock over all 500 pounds of crazy teacher, but I can flash enough fire in her face to keep her from seeing you. I think." As Anna blurts out how she was really feeling, how scared she was, Jean reaches out to hold her hand for some calm and reassurance. With one of her big, brown wings at her back still for good measure too. Addressing the rest of the two Houses, Ms. Sanders nods at Reggie. "Thinking you know I can fight and seeing me fight aren't the same thing, Anna. This is to demonstrate a point. Powers aren't everything. Just having powers doesn't mean somebody is better than you or will be able to beat you. There's no hierarchy making some gamma irradiated Hulk better than a mermaid living in Atlantis. Or some flatscan in a power suit better than a teenaged mutant graffiti artist. Or not having anything at all. It's about training, experience, skill, and smarts. All of those things can be taught and learnt over time, for when you have your mutant abilities and in the event you don't." She explains, surprisingly in a much less harsh tone than normal. It might almost be her being an actual teacher? "This will be something that can stay with you for a lifetime. You might not like it, you may disagree with it philosophically, but the fact of the matter is you need to be ready for it." She looks at the Blues. "Because you never know when it might hit you." Then to Elly. "Or when you might need it most." Ms. Sanders sends Reggie and Bo back with the other girls. "People aren't scared of us because of powers. They are scared of us because we're different. Not even just looking different, we're different inside." Ms. Sanders points to her chest. "We're homo sapiens superior. Mutants. And that's all they need to be scared of us." She sighs. "They're so scared of us that handcuffs aren't enough. They're so scared jail isn't enough. They are so scared of us that living on a tiny island half a world away wasn't enough." Ms. Sanders taps the nullifier bracelet on her wrist. "Suppressing our DNA is the only way they feel safe. Taking away what make us us is the only way they'll feel safe. Most of you probably had some inhibitor on before Ms. Frost brought you here. And having fought for a better life for Mutantkind in the Brotherhood, I've had these on me plenty. It's as medieval as cutting the hands off a thief for stealing bread. But because it's to contain dangerous mutant threats, it's okay." She looks to Anna with a shockingly sympathetic look. Because any sympathy at all from Blunt Trauma was a shock. "I know you've been through a lot, and that's okay. It's supposed to be scary. And it's okay to be scared of these things." Ms. Sanders drops her shackled wrist to her side. "But you shouldn't be scared of me, I'm not going to break your bones and put you in the infirmary or anything like that. This is just training, and you can just watch." She assures Anna. "But if you fall, you need to get back up again. I'm sure you've flown into a tree, or hurt your wings like you did this week. But you still fly. Flying is part of who you are, isn't it? You wouldn't even think about not flying, no matter how bad you fall. But with a power nullifier on," She holds her wrist out. "Your wings will not work anymore. No more flying. That's scary too, isn't it?" "You need to face your fears. It doesn't have to be today, but you will have to. What happened last week isn't going to be the last time you're faced with this." Ms. Sanders directs to Anna, but looks over the two Houses more generally. "That goes for everybody. People are already scared of us for no good reason. We don't have to be scared of ourselves." She nods to the next pair. "Rickie. Sam. You can be next." Ms. Sanders steps back again, getting ready. "You have powers as cape busters, and I don't. Catch and capture the dangerous, escaped mutant." Robodog fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 03:12
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Rickie Returning Ms. Sanders' nod, Rickie steps closer to Sam for a little conference. "Okay, we can't punch her out, that's just not on the table. I'm going to try talking her down. Back me up if you can, but if she's adamant on this being hand-to-hand training, when I give the signal I want you to get disgusted. Think of the most stomach-churningly horrible things you can. Your skin should follow suit. I know you can do this, and you can keep it quiet until it's time to blow chunks." She gives Sam a bright smile. Then, holding up one finger for Ms. Sanders, Rickie skips over to Anna and gives her a hug. "I had no idea how bad that crash was for you. If you wanna talk about it later?" She'd apparently started to make a longer sentence, then just cut it short. She leans into the hug a little more and murmurs, "If you could help now, though, I'd appreciate it. If it goes pear-shaped, hex Trauma." Releasing Anna with a smile, she turns back to Blunt Trauma and paces slowly, deliberately, toward her. "You're right, of course, that we need to be able to defend ourselves. Sam and myself perhaps most of all, because our powers are highly visible without much actual power behind them. We have maybe half a karate lesson between us, and our actual strength isn't even up to your unpowered level. But we still have strengths we can use, and conflict resolution isn't just about punching the guys dressed in bright primary colors." Rickie's outfit shifts to a crisp cop-blue pinstripe suit, or as close as could be managed with a sweaty t-shirt and sweatpants. "So, ma'am, will you come quietly?" - - - I'm willing to throw dice at this if need be. Also willing to throw a Hero Point at Sam so she can have what would have been Nauseate in 2E, and is now some sort of Sense-Dependent Perception range Affliction. And noting mostly so I don't forget, if/when things go south I'll be stunting a Sustained Reaction Immunity to entrapment, which should deal with grappling. Get sweaty enough and you're all slippery.
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Jun 30, 2015 19:55
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Sam seems to be with Rickie on her plan, as team Mondrian always works together. Usually in overlapping geometric shapes. "Ma'am, there is only outcome here." Sam joins in with what Rickie was saying, walking up besides her. Her skin goes a sort of milky cyan. "And that's you coming with us. And we don't want to have to force you. But if you don't stand down and come quietly like we're asking, then we'll be left without any alternative." Compared to the down and out, borderline suicidally depressed Sam that the Blue met when school started; Sam seemed to rather be enjoying the role play with Rickie. Then, turning her head away from Blunt Trauma, Sam whispers to her partner. "Umm. Rickie? How am I 'spose to do the throw up thing? I know if I lava lamp I can kinda trance people out a bit, but I don't think what you're saying is the same. Or is it? Sorry! Just tell me what to do." Blunt Trauma, for her part, smirks. "You're right. For as much airplay and media attention big fights between powered people gets, it's not the be all and end all of conflict resolution. Sitting down and talking things out without resorting to violence is exactly what Professor Xavier's entire philosophy on human/mutant relations is based on. And has probably seen greater returns than Magneto's militant efforts have given us." She grants Rickie. "But then you get sentinels, and they don't reason before they kill you. And the people who build them, who don't reason before they kill you. And their lackies, like you two, who might try to look nice but ultimately are just going to stick this on me," She holds up her wrist with the power inhibitor on it. "And lock me up to kill me quietly." She counters, probably from personal experience. She was in the Brotherhood, after all. "And as an aside, the last person who asked me to stand down and come quietly was Wolverine." Blunt Trauma reveals. "And I had to politely decline his offer as well. And just so you know, punching an adamantium skull hurts like hell." So no, it didn't seem like Blunt Trauma was going to be talked down. But neither had she attacked yet.
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Jul 3, 2015 07:15
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Anna This shouldn't be about her, no more than the school play was. She isn't the one who was hospitalized after the crash, or the one who was going to be pulled the gently caress apart, and knowing that just makes her feel more frustrated with herself, and guilty for making a scene. It's about the threat of violence, and how scared she was of it when it happened in New York, fighting people instead of Gloom's dorky robots. It's about her wings too, the big, stupid, beautiful things that are going to leave her as typecast as being a girl does. Anna meets Elly's glowing gaze, but barely manages to squeeze a smile past tightly pursed lips. She nods acknowledgement. Is she making the new girl feel bad? Her eyes dip in silent apology. She'll have to say something as soon as she gets a chance. Taking Jean's hand, Anna squeezes tighter than she intended... which isn't much, as grips go. She's quiet as the teacher and other students, nodding as she tries to work what they're saying past her anxieties. The goth nods. Lots of scrapes and bruises taken, trying to figure out how to stay aloft... and how to land. "I stuck to open places, mostly, but I did learn trees aren't as solid as they look on top. The hard way. And... it's not just not being able to fly. It's the thought I might die because one of those things makes my body reject my wings. It makes me want to run and hide, and I know that's stupid, and selfish, and pointless, because people have been doing medieval things to women like me, or to people who have roots in the wrong places, or just because, for... since forever. But I'm still afraid of getting hurt... or hurting other people." She shrugs helplessly, shaking her head. "I guess that's some of why I'm here." Rickie's hug is accepted without hesitation. Greedily, even. Anna's feathers rustle as she keeps herself from draping her wings about the other Blue. "I didn't either," she confesses. "And thanks. Sorry for making a scene." Feeling as vulnerable as she is, it takes a great deal of Anna's acting chops to keep a poker face in light of Rickie's request. She gives a squeeze before releasing, but doesn't risk a nod. Ms. Sanders can probably spot a huddle at a hundred yards, with or without her glasses on. --- If things go pear shaped for Rickie and Sam, Anna will drop an Affliction on Trauma: pre:Snare 8 * points Total Cost: 4/Rank Base Cost: 1/Rank Action: Standard Save: None Range: Perception Duration: Sustained Extras: Subtle 2 (+2), Perception range (+2/rank), Cumulative Affliction (+1/rank), Extra Condition (+1/rank), Resisted by Dodge (+0), Limited Degree (-1/rank) Effects: Restrain a target with sheer foul luck. Dodge vs DC; one degree of failure leaves target hindered and vulnerable, two leaves target defenseless and immobilized. Effect can be broken via Damage or Sleight of Hand-- basically grabbing on and yanking oneself free of the area.
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Jul 3, 2015 19:48
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Rickie Nodding softly, Rickie whispers to Sam, "Same kinda deal, just more... bleeah," demonstrating her firm grasp of the English language. At Ms. Sanders' polite refusal, the artist spreads her hands. "Well, ma'am, let me paint a picture, because that's the other thing I'm good at." Pigment spreads out from her, forming sketchy architectural details not present in the gym. A vaulted ceiling. Windowed counters. A massive vault door laying ripped off its hinges (Which would have been covering the door to the locker room). Luxurious sofas that occasionally have frightened-looking people peeking out from behind. Large windows in the direction of the other girls, with an agitated crowd and police barriers visible through them. The whole effect is rather like the music video for "Take On Me." "There's a whole crowd out there baying for your blood. The police are only slightly less insistent, and have deployed snipers. You'll have to bear with me and assume they're a threat, normally I think you'd laugh at bullets." A handful of laser beams track across the floor from the windows. Ms. Sanders seems to be in a place where they can't get a line of fire, although one comes close to her foot. "The sentinels will take a while to get here, and in the meantime they've sent in hostage negotiators to look busy. Us." She can't help breaking a smile here, but her face grows rapidly serious again. "They want to see you dead, ma'am. They want you to step even further out of line so the news crews can get a nice shot of the dangerous mutant criminal's brains splattered all over the crime scene. The governor wants it known if you're a mutant in his state, this is what you get. Toe the line or be splattered across it. "But his polls are down among liberal voters, and thus, us. You can give the finger to all those fuckers," she gestures to the windows, "and deny them a good look at the inside of your head. You might even find a better opportunity to escape. It's chance versus certainty, ma'am. Stall, and the sentinels arrive. Charge or flee, and the snipers take you out. Surrender, and we need to get you into a van, to a holding facility, into a cell... A lot can happen on the road." She spreads her hands again, a pair of plain steel handcuffs sketching themselves into one of them. "But it's your decision. We won't throw the first punch unless you absolutely want us to."
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Jul 7, 2015 07:17
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Sarah "Wow." Sarah had long known that Rickie had a flair for the dramatic - hell, it was Rickie - but this was something completely different. For all the posturing and sweat-based special effects the tiny little thing had quite the presence when she needed to. Call it intimidation, call it blunt honesty, even as a bystander Sarah was tempted to put her hands behind her back and come quietly. Whether or not a seasoned pro like Blunt Trauma felt the same way was another question of course. "Ok that has totally given me an idea." She whispers quietly out of the corner of her mouth, just loud enough for Alice to hear. "It can be Plan B. You go with whatever you're thinking of - if we can get her pinned she should have to give up."
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Jul 7, 2015 11:20
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Again, Alice is unmoving. But Sarah is pretty dang sure that she got the message. And that Alice, somehow, had a plan she was going with first. Rickie talks. Blunt Trauma listens. Both stand in place, no doubt sizing the other up for the inevitable fight that was to come. But, except it doesn't come. Maybe it was the illustration that Rickie painted up. Maybe it was Anna's hex. Maybe it was Sam looking real menacing standing side by side with Rickie. Or maybe it was just what the painter said. But she doesn't have to raise her fists and get ready for a fight. And neither does Blunt Trauma. All she does is smirk. "Heh." It's the first time, Red house or Blue house, that you have heard anything even remotely like the sound of amusement come from Blunt Trauma's lips. You'd think this is what she'd be like after murdering a dozen people, but no. She's still just standing there, after listening to Rickie's speech. "Thinking outside the box is always important." She announces, pointing at Rickie. "Especially for a fight that might not be even. And all… this?" Ms. Sanders motions to everything Rickie had painted to illustrate her story. "Is very outside the box. But not a totally unbelievable scenario, either. I like it. And you sound more reasonable than most negotiators I've had to listen to." She is still actually smiling. Not to Tabby or Ms. Lang levels, but it was definitely a smile. "The situation this dangerous mutant escapee faces, with a power nullifier on, leaves her without a lot of options. Especially if she is concerned about greater Mutantkind, and not just trying to save her own skin. Any aggression, and every mutant in the state suffers. Fight back, and most likely get shot. Surrender, and get locked back behind bars." She looks to Rickie and Sam. "The only at all viable alternative I see is taking you both as hostages and human shields. Which only proves your governor's point about dangerous mutants, and there's no guarantee snipers won't shoot anyway." Ms. Sanders puts both hands in the air. "So the dangerous, escaped mutant surrenders to live to fight another day." "But," She drops her arms, waving the pair back in with the rest of their Houses. "You also run the risk that the one you're talking down isn't going to cooperate for whatever reason. They may be furious beyond words, have nothing left to live for, insane, or would just rather die before being thrown back behind bars. Being backed into a corner like that would make those people very dangerous." Ms. Sanders warns. "If that were the case, left with no other option, you'd be in a fight for your lives. They'd try to take you both down, probably kill you and as many others as they could before they get taken out. And that's not even thinking about the drastic actions being backed into a corner can drive somebody to. Like breaking your own arm to get a power nullifier off." Helpfully, Ms. Sanders mimics the action for the Reds and Blues. "But you're lucky you're not trying to talk down Ms. Lopez. It's just important to never rely on words alone. Or any one plan of action, for that matter. Always have a Plan B." She looks at the pair. "Which I assume you two did have." With that over, Ms. Sanders claps her hands. "Okay. Sarah and Alice, you're u-" Before Ms. Sanders even finishes talking, the sky turns into a churning blue maelstrom. The same deep azure as Alice's eye were right now. Thunder claps, rumbling through the gym and actually shaking the room. And lightning strikes, bolts hailing down around Blunt Trauma like she were a lightning rod. One of them strikes true, the bright blue lightning bolt arcing down from the roof and hitting Blunt Trauma in the calf. It spears right through her leg, jamming into the floor. Blunt Trauma seems caught off-guard and somewhat perturbed by the turn of events. !
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Jul 9, 2015 18:03
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Sarah Sarah's first thought was how she was going to deflect blame for this. Now to her credit she had never actually seen Alice do anything on this scale and there was no way of knowing she could. And honestly it was Blunt Trauma - she might literally just walk it off. And they'd never actually set a clear limit on - However her second thought was that she could probably run with it. To hell with Rickie's dramatic flair - when life gave you empathic-weather-ade ... Clapping Alice on the shoulder and gesturing downwards - along with a "Got her!" that she had to shout over the thunder - she steps forward, pacing slowly towards the pinned teacher. With any luck Alice would get the hint and stop the show of force, otherwise Sarah's big speech would kinda lose its impact. "That was Plan A." She tries to keep her voice steady, although a mixture of nerves and excitement slip in. "Plan A is the easy way for you. Plan A is the carrot. Nothing wrong with getting the smackdown from something like this." Her arms sweep the room, as she prays she doesn't become a lightning rod. "You fought, you lost, you live to fight another day. We both know you'll get out of whatever hole they stick you in sooner or later." Her arms descend, one thumb jerking into her chest. "I'm Plan B. I'm the stick. You see that nullifier on your arm? It's HammerTech's latest model, the one with the new 4.0 OS. Right now it's working at, oh, 80% capacity. If I push it to 100% it'll start discharging electric shocks right into your central nervous system. You'll be a blubbering mess on the floor, with about 2 hours before the damage is permanent." She takes another step forward. "If you don't give up in the next 10 seconds I won't just turn it up - I'll overload it. At 120% capacity I give it 3 seconds before the power core explodes. Boom. There goes your arm. Of course, by that time it'll already have scoured out every X-Gene in your body. If the blood loss doesn't get you the cancer will. If the cancer doesn't get you, congratulations - enjoy the rest of your life as a washed-up flatscan. No Brotherhood. No powers. Nothing. Just day after day thinking about how you'd still be Blunt Trauma if you'd just given up. Because it's all your choice and I won't let you choose to keep giving mutants a bad name." She points at Alice. "Carrot." She points at herself. "Stick." She points at Blunt Trauma. "Choose."
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Jul 9, 2015 22:25
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Rickie The artist gathers up her pigment (A cloud over Ms. Sanders' head becomes visible) as she moves back to stand with the rest of the class, giving Sam a celebratory sidelong hug as they go. She nods gently to the teacher's speech, and waggles one hand to indicate they had about half of a plan B. While she'd been pretty sure she could keep Trauma from getting a grip on her own self, logically Rickie was thinking the fight would have ended when the strongwoman hit her with Sam, nausea or no nausea. The moment of relaxation she gets as Blunt Trauma calls the next pair forward lasts precisely until Alice goes crazy with the lightning. The ball of pigment goes flying over Rickie's shoulder and into the wall behind her in a reflex to keep Explodyville unpopulated. Although she has to respect anyone that can take a surprise lightning bolt and display only mild concern, she can't help but be worried about Ms. Sanders, who was probably not expecting to actually be wounded today. And then Sarah delivers her ultimatum, which draws one singular response from Rickie. "...Wow." Dareon fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Jul 10, 2015 |
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Jul 10, 2015 05:44
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"That was all you, Rickie!" Sam gushes as they hug on the way back to the others. "You're so good at this stuff!" She beams, skin rippling with happy reds and pinks. She seems happy with their effort! Though she is still impassive, Alice not even holding your hands up or anything while she summons the thunder and lighting, nor reacting when Sarah claps her on the shoulder, she gives her a single nod of acknowledgement and drops her end on the show of force. The thunder dies down and the lightning storm halts and the lightning bolts cease, but not before Blunt Trauma had ripped the spear of a bolt from out of her leg and tossed it aside. It fades away along with the rest. The deep blue storm clouds still loom overhead, though. Ready to strike again at Sarah's word. Not in a position to argue, Blunt Trauma couches on the ground with hands on her leg wound. She puts pressure on it, but blood is steadily oozing out from the puncture. The lightning bolt was a through and through, and missed any major blood pathways down there. But it still looked nasty, and an ankle injury like that would severely limit movement. Well, in normal people it would. Blunt Trauma would probably dance on the thing before admitting that it hurt even a little bit. The grimace on her face could be from pain, if Blunt Trauma was a mere mortal after all, or it could be from having to listen to Sarah gloat. Smugly gloat. Smugly gloat in a grandiose fashion. Both the Blues and Reds expect Blunt Trauma to shoot something back. Maybe not a snappy one liner like Spiderman, but a defiant rebuke at least. But no. She stays silent, says nothing, letting out not a single yelp of pain from her leg. She just stays crouched down low, and glares as Sarah strolls forward confidently and goes on at length about how she can make that power inhibitor on her wrist sing her tune. And it was going to be an extremely painful one. Then Sarah points at Blunt Trauma. "Choose." And she does. In a flash, Blunt Trauma has reached out and grabbed Sarah's pointed hand. It's now got a fine smear of blood on it. But she doesn't yank her in. Instead Blunt Trauma roars and she launches off both feet, blood squirting from her ankle wound, and tackles Sarah. Hard. Like a linebacker crunching a receiver over the middle, even if nothing is broken or bruised it knocks the wind out of the girl. Sarah's caught like a deer in headlights, not reacting until Blunt Trauma already had a vice grip on her hand and had slammed into her. The pair land on the ground, with Blunt Trauma on top. The thunderclouds above crack and rumble again as the storm comes back to life. Blunt Trauma quickly sinks a knee into Sarah's chest to keep her from getting much of her breath back, blood seeping out of her ankle wound and staining the bottom of Sarah's top. Blunt Trauma's arm was fixed firmly across Sarah's neck. She had the Blue in something of a thankfully restrained chokehold, forearm crushing right down into Sarah's neck. No, not forearm. Wrist. And the cold metal and whirring (or for Sarah, chattering) electronics of the power nullifier strapped on that wrist digs painfully into Sarah's neck. "Stick." And just a FYI Staggy I rolled intimidation stuff, and Sarah failed against Blunt Trauma by 20 or so. It's not a hard and fast mechanics things here, but I would say Sarah is kinda scared. Robodog fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Jul 11, 2015 |
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Jul 11, 2015 07:37
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Sarah It would be an understatement to say that Sarah was just slow in reacting. One moment she was standing there, feeling pretty good (and not too smug). Then there was a blur, a frenzied impression of a raging Blunt Trauma moving impossibly towards her. The next thing she knew she was down, flat, no breath in her lungs and a knee in her chest. The smell of blood was bad enough but the not unnoticeable rage in the teacher's voice compounded it, spoke to something primal in Sarah's brain. All the while the revolting, hideous nullifier chattered away across her throat. Truth be told her big speech had been a bluff, but now she could hear it whispering all sorts of secrets. Blood pressure. X-gene suppression efficiency. Expected time to cellular breakdown. Forget that it was Ms Sanders. There was a terrible pressure bearing down on her and she needed to breathe, she needed to get away from the nullifier, she needed to get away from this terrifying woman who she had completely and utterly underestimated. All she could think of was the gun. The gun she had brought back from New York, that she had stashed in her room and pored over in every free moment. She needed a weapon, a gun, ,anything. Anything that would just push this huge, threatening thing away from her. The gun. She had spent so long studying it. Every circuit, every coil, all while it whispered away in its cold, detached tone. The primary emitter. The charging circuits. The strange not-quite power cell that looked just like a spark plug. All of it coming together and pushing a beam of energy out just like that... Ms Sanders hadn't pinned her arms. What was the point? So as Sarah is scrabbling, struggling to push the teacher up and off the beam of energy and heat and force spits straight out of her arms and up, into the teacher's stomach at point blank range. PP applied per the OOC thread, HP spent to trigger Technological Mimicry - which I haven't actually used up until this point - as a secondary mutation. Blunt Trauma is scary. pre:SciGun - 10/10 PP Damage (Ranged) = 1pp/r x 4 Weaken (Broad: Power Sources, Ranged) = 3pp/r x 2 Standard, Instant
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Jul 12, 2015 15:35
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The X-gene, despite being studied by many of the worlds foremost geneticists, is still not completely understood. Exactly why mutations happen has been a subject hotly debated for decades, and the issue of secondary mutations aren't even as well studied as that. The basics of it are much like that of regular mutation, that powers appear due to the X-gene becoming active. But the X-gene has already been active, in Sarah's case for years. So why does it all of a sudden develop a completely new mutation, in somebody who is already a mutant? If Sarah were a Roborat perhaps she could gleam an answer, but right now she was as confused as anybody. But it is fascinating to watch the changes as they happen. Inside Sarah's arms, just as an engineer breaks down an old machine to build a new one, her secondary mutation was building something new in her arms. Her new mutation was using the technological blueprints in her mind to work off of, assembling an almost perfect 1:1 replica of that science gun out of the organic material it had at hand. In her hands. Unfortunately, nobody can see this happen. So they are all just left confused as a massive spark of light flashes out of Sarah's hands, and deafening boom crackles across the gym. Blunt Trauma, getting the blast point blank in the chest, is shot a clear twenty feet backwards off Sarah. And Sarah had been hit with enough recoil from her hand blasts that she crunches into the floor and launches herself half a dozen feet off the ground as well. They fly up and out, then start to fall back down. But before either can hit the floor and no doubt break bones and shatter ribs they are swept up by… trees? Deep blue, the same colour as the raging storm above. The storming clouds had rained down, rising up in a matter of seconds as azure trees underneath Sarah and Blunt Trauma and breaking their fall just a couple feet from the hard gym floor. The trees then quickly collapse back down, softly depositing both combatants on the ground before disappearing entirely. Alice's eyes dull, and she jogs over to Sarah. And actually talks! "Are you okay?" She asks in a soft voice, kneeling down next to her. "What was that?" Before anyone can do the same for Blunt Trauma, she is already getting back to her feet. The purple front of her costume is now blackened char from where Sarah had blasted her, and was still slightly smoking. Even though Sarah had just listened to the power nullifier working away… seriously, were her powers actually off? Standing up after all that? "For reference girls," She says, one hand holding her stomach and the other fixing her glasses. "That's a 'Plan B'." Ankle stabbed. Shot in the chest. No doubt clutching some internal injuries. And she was still walking back over to the assembled Reds and Blues, her face betraying little if any pain. That had to be some zen focus blocking out pain stuff, because seriously. Lasers to the chest. Ms. Sanders looks down at the pair she was fighting. "Since when could you do that, Sarah?"
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Jul 13, 2015 14:43
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Elly "We're going to lose, yes. But that is fine with me," she softly tells Gabrielle. "Her stature is why it's important that we don't allow her to stand still and dig in her heels. If she has to keep moving because of your fire in her face, her footing and balance can be more easily upset. Exploiting that will be my problem, but in principle it's just plain physics. Gravity can bring anything down." Not that Elly is highly enthusiastic about her odds of success, but the theory seems sound enough. Getting her sluggish body to correctly put it into practice, that's what she knows will take her a long time to work out. There's much to be said for trying to resolve conflicts in a non-violent manner, of course. Watching Rickie and Sarah do so (with varying degrees of success) causes Elly to think about it for a moment. Not that it's something you can just…do. You need a way with words; you need the right kind of leverage with which to back up said words; the circumstances have to be overall conducive to it; and the other person needs to be capable of being, as well as willing to be, reasoned with on some level. If the proverbial stars align and all goes well, you can talk a dangerous mutant down the way Rickie did. If all does not go well and disaster strikes, you get a Sarah-style incident. She starts forward when her fellow Blue goes flying, frustrated by the lag between seeing something happen and being able to physically react to it. At least Alice manages to cushion Sarah's (and Ms Sanders's) landing in time using her curious powers – the gym teacher probably would've been fine either way, but her housemate could have been injured badly if she'd hit the floor at an awkward angle. With the otherwise reticent Red asking the same questions that are on Elly's mind, the newest member of Blue House hovers nearby, ready to give Sarah a hand if she wants to get up, or to check her over if she seems to be seriously hurt. Whatever just happened, it's strange. Elly knows by now that Sarah's mutant power involves manipulating or taking control of electronic devices with her mind, but that doesn't explain blasts of energy exploding from her hands. She supposes that's just the way it is with mutants: the full extent of their abilities seldom is readily apparent. It wasn't in her case until last week's events, after all.
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Jul 14, 2015 01:04
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Sarah At first Sarah is sure that Blunt Trauma has body slammed her or something. A violent force separates the two, slamming Sarah deeper into the floor and driving what little air remains in her lungs from her body. She's too disorientated to realise that's she's airborne until she begins to fall, scooped up by a far calmer manifestation of Alice's powers. Then it's all she can do to slump back and gulp down air. "I'm fine." Alice and Elly are probably unlikely to believe Sarah, given how slowly rolls onto her side, then levers herself into a standing position. "I'm fine, just a bit ..." She is now acutely aware of the chattering voice in her arm of all places. Prodding down with one finger, she can feel the lumps and bumps of capacitors and heat sinks under the skin, fighting for space with bone and muscle. There is the slightest stiffness in her wrists and, in the center of her palms, the concentric ridges of the scigun's primary discharge coils are faintly visible. "That's kinda gross," she mutters to nobody in particular. She looks up with a start at Blunt Trauma's question. How was that woman still standing? "Honestly? About three seconds ago." She flexes her arm, seeing the circuitry inside of it twist and coil. "Guess I lose points for relying on dumb luck or whatever. Alice deserves all the credit." She turns and grins at her partner. "I'll high-five you once I figure out how to disarm myself." ... wait, Alice was talking?
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Jul 17, 2015 10:41
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"Well, at least we can agree on that." Gabrielle sighs, watching Ms. Sanders walk off getting shot in the chest. "Look dude, that sounds smart and everything. Gravity and pushing her over. But she just got shot by lasers and look at her!" She waves at the teacher, who while not looking 100% definitely didn't look like somebody suffering laser damage. "We're getting our asses kicked, dude! Maybe kick where Alice stabbed her? If I keep her moving and you hurt her leg some more, she could trip over." She shrugs. "But if she gets close to me I'm saying uncle." Not only does Alice talk, but she helps Sarah roll on her side and get back on her feet. And it helps a lot, Sarah now being able to focus on breathing without it feeling like a car rammed into her lungs. "Do you need crutches?" She offers, her eyes briefly flashing their bright blue again. Considering all she made in the fight, a pair of crutches for Sarah probably wouldn't even be a problem. Or a chair. Whatever. Alice also notices that Sarah has… stuff, in her arm. "That isn't gross, that's amazing." She says, restraining herself from poking at the ridges and circles of machinery herself. "I can't even imagine what's in there. I'd love to have a look." But she doesn't get out any blue screwdrivers right away, still focused enough to help Sarah stay on her own two feet for now. "You talking her down meant I could focus on my side of things. We both deserve credit." She smiles, hand held out for the high-five. Whenever Sarah was able to give it without blowing Alice's hand off. "You couldn't do this before? At all?" Ms. Sanders confirms, sounding a little surprise. "That's unusual. Maybe you've had a secondary mutation?" She suggests. "You should get yourself checked out just to make sure it isn't anything to worry about. Also, make sure you haven't cracked any ribs." At least that second part sounded like a good idea. "Dumb luck happens in real fights all the time, that's fine. Just as long as you don't rely on it." Ms. Sanders explains. "The main take away is that talking doesn't always work out. And bombs are a poor weapon to use hand-to-hand. But you handled it failing as well as anybody. Good job." And then to Alice. "Your power control is coming along very well. But you still need far too much concentration to keep it going. Sarah keeping me busy saved you big time." She reminds Alice, just in case she was feeling cocky at all. "Okay. Gabrielle. New Girl." She points to the pair, beckoning them over. "Dangerous mutant escapee just got stabbed in the leg and shot in the chest. She should be easy for two veteran cape killers like you to capture." Blunt Trauma's stance is different now. Obviously she knew how to fight when injured, and had done it before. She has her weight on her uninjured leg, leading with it and protecting her puncture wound. And she keeps her arms down lower, protecting the charred blast damage on her costume. "Go!"
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Jul 18, 2015 14:36
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Elly "Its frequency and wavelength, as well as the substantial kinetic energy imparted by the blast, suggest that it wasn't technically a laser at all but some other type of directed energy beam," Elly idly points out, then turns to look at the goth girl. "I know that. But after everything else that happened to me, getting my butt kicked a bit is a very minor concern." She blinks and nods. "I was thinking the same. Unsporting though it may be, Miss Sanders did mention isolating and hammering the weak link. Of course, she'll be expecting no less." Another blink. "Just give it your all. I'll figure something out." When she and Gabrielle are called forward, Elly gives the grumpy goth a light encouraging pat on the shoulder (fiery aura permitting). Clenching and unclenching her fists, paying close attention to every step in an attempt to get a better feeling for how much her body lags behind her mind, she locks eyes with Blunt Trauma. "My name is Elly," she says, with what might be the faintest hint of defiance in her voice. Perhaps some tiny part of her, the one that isn't coolly collected and all intellect all the time, has had enough of that kind of appellation by now, enough of being some nameless mutant girl who is referred to as if she weren't even present. Or perhaps she simply felt the need to clarify. At any rate, if it was supposed to be some sort of taunt to unsettle Elly, it doesn't work. She takes a leaf out of Bo and Regina's book to a degree, calmly circling around Ms Sanders a little so the teacher can't easily keep an eye on both Elly and Gabrielle at the same time. Of course, once the Red starts doing her flame-y thing – whatever shape exactly that'll take –, there is bound to be an opening of some sort, even if only for a moment. And that's what Elly intends to capitalise on. She knows she needs to keep low, move quickly, look for any flaws in Blunt Trauma's footing. She should pay attention to the teacher's wounded limb, but mustn't let it blind her to everything else; to the strength and reach of those arms, to the burst of speed and power the mutant's legs can put out, de-powered or not. There are many factors to take into account, and if her body were anywhere near as responsive as her mind, Elly is confident she could handle this situation fairly easily. But it isn't and she can't, so she'll have to do the best she can and hope it'll suffice. Should everything works out in her favour and Miss Sanders be brought down, whether by way of a solid blow to her wounded leg or thanks to a bodily shove turning a slight imbalance into an all-out tumble, Elly intends to make use of the damage already done by Sarah. Gabrielle had the right idea, of course. The scarred mutant knows she doesn't have anywhere near the strength to put Blunt Trauma into any kind of restraining hold, but surely the skin beneath that patch of charred costume has to be sore at the very least, perhaps even a little burnt. And as she came to experience first-hand very recently, it's that burnt skin is extremely sensitive. Some punches to the injured area are as close as Elly is going to get to putting the dangerous fugitive in a state suitable for capture – as unlikely as she deems it that her efforts will even let her get that far. To say nothing of the fact that a significant part of her own face is an ever-so-slowly healing burn wound, of course. But Elly has made her peace with that. Spending a hero point to gain the benefit of the Improved Trip advantage until the end of Elly's next turn! Also using extra effort for a +2 bonus to the initial close attack check, for a grand total of…+2. On a success, making an opposed check against Blunt Trauma's Acrobatics using Elly's Athletics (-1  ) to trip her. Even if Elly loses, BT can't counter-trip her thanks to the advantage.
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Jul 19, 2015 01:59
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"Bet whoever did all that to you didn't use your name either, New Girl." Blunt Trauma makes and educated guess, motioning to the scars littering Elly's still bald head. Elly didn't need her enhanced brain to see that Blunt Trauma was trying to push her buttons now, but that was okay. Because she and Gabrielle had a plan. Elly moves behind their target, Gabby moves in front. A lightly burning cloud surrounds her, hopefully enough to deter Blunt Trauma from making many moves against her. For the first few moments the three of them just circle, Elly and Gabby going around on the outside and Blunt Trauma pivoting in the centre. Elly moves in for a few testing prods and pokes, but finds Blunt Trauma is quite skilled at keeping her back protected as she swats her away. Gabrielle causes her cloud to billow and belch a few small flames out at their teacher, but Blunt Trauma catches them with her guarded arms and doesn't suffer for it. Their dance started, it was time to start the fight for real. Gabby draws out handfuls of flame from her cloud and casts them at Blunt Trauma, aiming for her face. "Yeah!" The Red loudly cheers. "Time to burn your eyebrows off! See how good you are when you can't see poo poo!" Arms up high, Blunt Trauma shakes off the flames and keeps them away from her face. Even for Elly, who hardly even knew her, it was abundantly clear that trash talking was second nature to Gabrielle. She really was quite good at it. Elly sees no opening. Another move in and Elly is shoved back by Blunt Trauma, her hands and arms warm from deflecting Gabrielle. And ember breaks through, getting Blunt Trauma in the face. She doesn't let any pain, if she felt it, show. "Hah!" Gabby jeers. "Gotcha that time, huh?" She throws another two fireballs at the teacher, who had now taken to ducking under them and leaving them head towards Elly. So far, none had come near the Blue. But it was another complication. "See how you like these then!" Elly sees no opening. More flares spark out, either catching Blunt Trauma in the face to blind her or forcing her arms in so close that she can't see past them anyway. "Feelin' the heat?" Gabby continues to goad, entirely oblivious to the pun. "Gonna melt those glasses right off your face, bitch!" She shouts, flames around her glowing hotter and hotter. "That's ten points off Red House." Blunt Trauma, quite calmly, declares from behind her guard. "Oh, what!?" Gabby protests, flames now raging around her. "What kind of bullshit is that!?" Blunt Trauma remains clam despite it all. "Rules are still rules. This is only to show you fighting, not sweari-" Elly sees her opening. Every position lines up perfectly. It plays out exactly as she sees it in her head. Not even the hinderance of her body moving in slow motion compared to her brain stops her. Blunt Trauma sticks her injured foot out just that little bit as she advances on Gabrielle, probably trying to use her distraction to take a shot at her. But Elly moves first. In a perfect run up she charges at Blunt Trauma, plants her right foot directly parallel to Blunt Trauma's, and follows through with her left. More blood squirts out and oozes out onto Elly's shoe. Without the injury Alice causes, it might have just been enough to knock her leg out from under her. But with it? Blunt Trauma crumples. But that's not it. Elly doesn't let up. As the pain shoots from her ankle, and Blunt Trauma falls down onto one knee, Elly makes sure that she lands on something hard. That burning chest wound was asking to get hit, and as Blunt Trauma collapses down Elly brings up both fists right into her chest. There's a dull thud, but Blunt Trauma stays resolutely silent. The look on her face says everything she wasn't though, Blunt Trauma was hurting real bad. In about as much pain as she was pissed off, equal measures both, and boy was she ever pissed off. "loving hell, Elly!" Gabby throws out, clearly not prepared for just how precise and vicious the new kid was going to be. With Elly still looming over her and Gabrielle burning away a few feet from her, Blunt Trauma puts her hand up. "Yeah, okay, you got me." She admits through a wheeze. Reggie with her sharpened senses can tell the air is thick with blood, Ms. Sanders' blood, and maybe not just from her leg either. And Ms. Sanders doesn't rise, either choosing to or in too much pain to get up from her knee. Instead, after a few moments of deep breathing, she fiddles with power nullifier bracelet until it springs open. Then, bracelet in hand, she closes her fist around it. And both Blues and Reds can see the speed at which her powers and strength return to her by how progressively smaller and smaller her fist gets, until the bracelet is one tiny crunched up ball of electronics. Then she hurls it at the wall, shattering it into pieces. She still doesn't look happy at all, but at least she didn't look so pained anymore. She stands up, the stab to her leg and blast to her chest seemingly not as big a problem as they were a few moments ago. "Alice? Sarah? Fix that drat thing." She tells that pair, pointing at the wall she threw the power nullifier at. "I still have two more rounds of getting my rear end kicked by the other Houses." Alice is quick to acquiesce, the flat-topped stump of a tree rising up against the wall. Little hummingbirds flutter in, collecting every tiny piece and dropping it off on the azure blue 'workbench'. Looking back to her tall, intimidating self even with the battle wounds, Ms. Sanders looks to her attackers. "Elly, Gabrielle, good work. Wait for an attack to open up an opportunity. Diversionary movement and attacking weak points. Very old tactics, very solid tactics." She commends, giving Elly a glare that the girl couldn't tell was suppose to be menacing or praising. "Now, you girls get the message from all that. Right?" She asks the gathered Reds and Blues. Well! Somebody is throwing down some serious stats! Let's just leave things up to the dice then! Oh, you rolled a nat 20. Well then!
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Jul 22, 2015 08:03
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Elly Watching the gym teacher's face contort into a snarl born of pain and rage alike, Elly slowly backs away – clearly she hasn't entirely ruled out the possibility of Blunt Trauma going for a parting punch in spite of having "surrendered". Not that Elly is in any shape to put up a fight in any case. Her efforts to bring down their target, fairly minor though they were in the grand scheme of things, have left her visibly exhausted, and she can already tell she'll be sporting numerous bruises as a result of testing her opponent's defences. Her hands, too, feel somewhat sore; Ms Sanders may not possess an adamantium-coated skeleton, but even getting that one punch in felt like delivering a blow to a brick wall. "Well done. I'm sorry about your house points, though," Elly softly tells Gabrielle as she moves to stand next to the goth again. She doesn't look very happy at all, though whether this is solely because her partner's successful diversion cost Red House some points is anyone's guess. "We do have Alice and Sarah to thank for laying the groundwork, of course," she adds, briefly but appreciatively nodding in the direction of the two girls. The scarred mutant nods again at Blunt Trauma's words. Is she talking about not calling a teacher a bitch, or about the importance of teamwork for taking down a superior opponent? Or both, perhaps? Either point is perfectly well understood by Elly, so she says nothing and simply nods. As verbose as she tends to be otherwise, it seems something has put her into a rather taciturn mood.
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Jul 25, 2015 06:05
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Rickie "Yes'm," Rickie responds. Although the lesson the artist took on top of what Blunt Trauma was putting down was "Know your enemy." Without the strongwoman's near-constant ranting about flatscans and the occasional anecdote about the Brotherhood, Rickie's hostage situation scenario would have been an entirely naive appeal to humanity and empathy based on the hostages, not the rest of mutantkind. She makes a mental note to have Elly's super-analysis and Sarah's super-Google on any team she put together.
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Jul 29, 2015 02:01
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Sarah "Yeah." With a thought the organic circuitry melts away - Sarah can feel the familiar bones and muscles flood back into place. "Brute force makes a hell of a Plan B." Alice gets her well-deserved high-five in a resounding clap that sends sharp sensation through Sarah's ribs. Broken or not, a trip to the MediShed was definitely in the cards. "We make a good team. I'd let you take a look at my arm-gun but I think the whole 'skin' thing would get in the way. I've got the original, if you're that interested?" As sore as her ribs are, they are at least in a better state than the nullifier bracelet. If Blunt Trauma had ground it any finer she could have used it for seasoning - as it was, the discrete components had at least survived. Each edge hummed with a quiet memory of where it was supposed to fit - the vile little device was definitely repairable, with the proper tools. Sarah draws in a whistle, a sound familiar to anyone who had had to get a car or a fridge fixed. "We-ell, this shouldn't be too bad. I'll need to take it down to the dome and scrounge up a few tools though - unless you can conjure up a soldering iron?" She directs the last question at Alice.
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Jul 30, 2015 00:25
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The thought that skin might get in the way doesn't seem to have occurred to Alice, who is slightly puzzled by the thought. But that is all replaced by a huge grin when Sarah offers to she her the real thing. "Oh!" It's the first piece of genuine excitement Sarah has seen from Alice… since ever, actually. "If that's okay! Yeah!" Her eyes probably would have lit up, had they not already been glowing bright blue. To her followup question though, Alice just stares blankly. Then after a few moments, turns around and walks off. "Eh. Don't worry about it." Gabrielle waves off Elly's condolences for losing points. "If that's the price I had to pay to see you kick Blunt Trauma's rear end then it was totally worth it." She grins. "Alice stabbed her and everything, yeah. But it was you who socked her in the gut. Seriously, you kicked rear end Elly." And that's all Gabby can say before Alice strides over with purpose, grabs Gabrielle, and drags her back over to her Dinseyesque workbench. Holding Gabrielle, Alice folds her fingers up so that only Gabby's index finger is pointing out. "Uhh." Gabrielle looks to Sarah. "This makes sense and isn't just Alice being crazy again, right?" She asks. Alice either doesn't listen or doesn't care, simply showing it to Sarah and saying. "Soldering iron." For the rest of the, Blunt Trauma takes the large silence as a yes and continues. "I'm the most well trained fighter at this school, been at this since I was younger than most of you, and even then it only took the dozen of you to bring me down for good with that bracelet on." She explains. "Elly experienced first hand what the world out there can be like for us. And powers or not, we're all mutants here. We're all criminals here. We're going to have to fight. And I don't just mean physically, or with powers. We're going to have to fight to just live a normal life, just to live out in the suburbs and raise a family like anybody else." She seems particularly soft, next to her usual harsh demeanour, here. "And that's what this class will be about, now. I'm going to show you what it takes to fight." "Hit the showers if you need it, class's over. I need a couple minutes to fix my leg anyway." She dismisses both the Reds and Blues. "Any questions?"
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Jul 30, 2015 04:19
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Anna Strangely enough, it isn't the role play and psychodrama that gets to Anna, the carrot and stick and retaliation that plays out on the hardwood, it's the swearing. It's not the swearing itself. She's sixteen, she's been going to public schools most of her life, and for some people she knows on the outside, curses are punctuation. It's more the dearth of them on-campus-- those rules of comportment lending a ladylike illusion to the whole experiment. It's the atmosphere of forced politeness that makes them sound even angrier than they are, as Gabby spits them out with her fireballs. Hotter than lava, tougher than any date turned Dork Octopus, and rhymes-with-witch straight through, Ms. Sanders is the kind of woman who's already easy to resent. Alice's impaling bolt, Sarah's goading, that terrible moment of retaliation and escalation-- sure it was an accident, whatever the heck Sarah did when Trauma had her pinned, but still. Would Gabby have been brave enough to start trash talking the teacher if she hadn't been wounded? Did Elly have to hit her in the scorch mark after she went down? Even if Anna was a telepath, she'd probably still be guessing-- people do a lot of things without thinking about them. Anna raises a hand as the teacher solicits questions, then folds her fingers into her palm. "I-- oh. I wanted to make sure you were going to be okay, Ma'am. I... don't know if it's polite to ask somebody how fast they heal, besides that." Shaking her head, she swirls her hand vaguely and defiantly mutters, "Call me a wuss or a suck-up, but this is a lot better than juvie and..." Another shake of her head. "Sorry. I guess I'm just shaky still. Ma'am."
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Jul 30, 2015 06:12
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Elly "Thanks, Gabrielle," she tells the Red girl after looking at her in silence for a moment, and gives her one of the more heartfelt smiles she's managed to muster in recent times. That kind of sincere recognition has been all but absent from her life ever since her mutation manifested itself, and while she struggles to show it, Elly is genuinely touched and pleased by Gabrielle's praise. (Regardless of the mildly macabre subject matter.) Whether she would've told the goth as much if Alice hadn't whisked her away is a different matter altogether, though. Elly briefly raises her hand as well after Anna has asked her question. It's a good question, too, and one she's curious to hear the answer to, if one is forthcoming. "There's something I'd like to talk to you about in private, ma'am, if that's all right."
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Jul 30, 2015 06:51
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"I've been through a lot worse than this, Anna." Ms. Sanders assures the Blue, and from the way she looked and said it there was little doubt that this was little more than a scratch in the grand scheme of things for her. "You don't need to worry about me, I'll be fine. But thank you for the concern." For some odd reason that also seemed to be genuine. This had to be a GloomBot, because this Blunt Trauma was being nice and hadn't murdered anybody yet. "And when you're worried about someone post-combat, it's fine to ask them how fast they heal." Considering she knows she can trust both Blue House and Red House, and that they had to either shower off or fix a broken power bracelet before they left, Ms. Sanders nods to Elly. "Okay Elly." She tells the girl, motioning for Elly to follow her into the gym staff room. Which was basically a large closet, with a table down one end covered in papers and folders and odds and sods. No more power nullifiers, though, which would come as a big relief. Ms. Sanders offers Elly the sole seat in the room, choosing to herself lean up against the wall. "You leave a hell of a mark, kid." Ms. Sanders grabs a roll of bandage and sports tape off the table and with a speed that only came with practise goes about wrapping her injured ankle with bandage and fixing it in place with very taut tape over the top. "So," She asks the girl in the middle of all that. "What did you want to talk about?"
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Jul 30, 2015 11:50
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Elly Giving the Reds a small wave just in case they're gone by the time she's done talking to Blunt Trauma, Elly follows her into the staff room. It's not particularly big, but then again the teacher's superhuman stature must make any enclosed space smaller than a gym seem cramped. Which in turn isn't doing Elly's claustrophobia any favours, but she does her best to ignore the awful feeling. Only a few more minutes and she'll be outside again, after all. Perching on the edge of the seat and toying with her bracelet, she just nods wordlessly in response to the compliment, such as it is. As much as she appreciated the sentiment when it came from Gabrielle, somehow it's different hearing it from the very person on whom she inflicted all that pain. Suddenly it's nothing to feel positive about, let alone be proud of. Even if it's the equivalent of earning a fairly decent grade; even if she only did what she was supposed to. Elly stares at her feet for a while. At the blood spatters staining her sneaker. "I wanted to say I'm sorry I hurt you, ma'am," she finally speaks up, looking at Ms Sanders. "What we attempted to do worked, obviously, and I'm satisfied it did, but I still don't like it." She gives her bracelet another twist. "I hate it when people get hurt. And even more so if I'm the one doing the hurting. I never liked it, of course, but it didn't truly sink in until today, in spite of what happened last week. Until I actually did it, knowingly and purposefully." Elly pauses, looking down as she shifts her foot a little to frown at the dried blood from a slightly different angle. "Maybe it's because I've been subjected to so much pain myself all these months. I wouldn't wish even a fraction of it on anybody. No matter who they are." She raises her eyes to meet Blunt Trauma's once more. "I just wanted you to know. For whatever it's worth." The bright-eyed mutant then sits up a little straighter. "That said, I do want to learn how to fight. I have to." She blinks, and a hint of agitation breaks through her calm demeanour again. "You know what happened. What I did. I've never regretted anything so much in my life. I haven't really talked about it to anyone, but it'd be fair to say it's all been eating away at me, as much as I've tried to pretend otherwise, to forget. But forgetting is something I'm terrible at." Elly swallows and shakes her head. "The closest I can get to making things right is learning to handle myself the way you do. If I could do that I wouldn't have killed three people, I wouldn't have hurt our – my – I wouldn't have badly hurt Miss Caida, I wouldn't have made a mess of the others' one day away from this place…" She trails off, taking a few deep breaths instead. "And it's like you said: there's no telling when that kind of situation will arise again. When someone is in danger and needs to be defended, whoever they might be. Me or other people. Mutants or not. If that day comes, I have to be ready for it." Having stared mostly at her hands or the floor these past minutes, Elly now looks at Miss Sanders again. "You'll be teaching us how to fight in gym class, but I'd like to know if there's anything I can do beyond that. Homework for the rest of my classes should take up a negligible amount of time, so putting in a couple of extra hours every day won't be an issue. No matter how gruelling these hours turn out to be." She blinks, giving Blunt Trauma an almost pleading look. "It'd mean a lot to me if you could help me, ma'am."
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Jul 31, 2015 04:20
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Elly's first comment just makes Ms. Sanders smirk. "If you had been here for more than a week you probably wouldn't be. None of them are." She nods towards the door, meaning the Reds and Blues. And probably the rest of the school body. "Payback for making everyone run so many laps." Considering it was her leg that took the most damage, it did seem something of a turnabout. "You don't need to be sorry, Elly. The whole exercise was to hurt me, and I've been hurt a hell of a lot worse than that. I wouldn't have let it happen it if I wasn't okay with it." Showing off her immense strength, Ms. Sanders tears off the tape with but a finger. "But I understand how you feel. It's hard to hurt people once you know how much it hurts yourself. It's a good thing you feel that way." For somebody with as much combat experience as Blunt Trauma, that probably wasn't surprising. Then the request, which raises an eyebrow to say the least. But Ms. Sanders listens all the same, reserving judgement until Elly had said everything she had to say. And for those fleeting moments Elly casts her eyes back up at the teacher, she can't determine one way or the other what Ms. Sanders thinks about her request. Leaning against the wall, arms crossed, eyes appraising the girl, Ms. Sanders takes some time before she answers. "You're what, Elly? Sixteen? Seventeen?" She asks, slouching slightly. "I was sixteen when I first took a life. Wasn't half as strong as I am now, but I was still more than strong enough to put my fist through their chest." She does a light punch in the air as if to demonstrate exactly what she did. "I still remember it as clear as day, actually seeing my hand be in and through the other side of this man was horrifying. I have never been so scared in my life." She looks Elly in her bright eyes. "The Headmistress told us you have an enhanced brain, senses and memory? I can't imagine how you're remembering it." Both the roll of tape and bandage get tossed back on the table. "Tabby." Ms. Sanders corrects. "Your House Mother doesn't like the formal stuff, if you're looking to say sorry to her you can start with that." She advises in an aside, before getting back to the topic at hand. Though she seemed even bigger in this small room, she doesn't seem nearly as imposing as she did out on the court. "Since you're being honest here Elly, I'll be honest too. There's no amount of training that's going to keep a scared teenaged girl cool, calm, and collected in a situation like you were in. It's just not going to happen." She, rather bluntly, tells the Blue. But her voice isn't without sympathy. "But what you can do is look at what happened, and learn from it. Start learning so that, god forbid, if you're in that situation again you will know exactly what to do and how to do it. That's one of the main reasons I upped and joined the Brotherhood. You have a better option than that." Uncrossing her arms, the scorch mark on her chest becomes visible once again. But it doesn't seem to be hurting Ms. Sanders at all anymore, not from the initial blast or from Elly hitting it. "The Headmistress wasn't overly supportive of teaching you girls how to fight, let alone actual combat training." She admits. "But I understand why you would want to do this, Elly. And you seem honest in wanting to for the right reasons. I've seen far too many people want to learn to fight just to hurt others, not to defend them." Elly is more than familiar with the look on Ms. Sanders face, as her teacher thinks hard about what she is going to do. "If this is going to happen," She comes to, after deep contemplation. "I want you to know exactly what's going to happen before you agree to anything." Ms. Sanders seems rather insistent. "This will be on top of Gym class, like the other extracurricular activities. And I will push you. I understand what you've been through, but I won't go easy on you because of it. We will have ninety minute training sessions after classes every day. You can have weekends off to recover. And you must check in with the medical shed after each session, you don't need to carry any more injuries than you've already got." She explains, looking at Elly for a response.
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Aug 1, 2015 06:42
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Sarah It takes a moment for Sarah to get her head round Alice's unique approach to logic - or was that a sense of humor? When she does get it, though, a grin spreads across her face. "It makes sense. Sort of." She eyes up the offered finger. "I asked for a soldering iron and, well, how fine can you focus your fire? If you can get it as fine as a pencil and poke where I show you I think we can get this drat bracelet fixed." Assuming this works, Tech 18 to try and fix the evil power nullifier.
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Aug 3, 2015 00:06
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Elly "I don't know. Schadenfreude is one thing, but you had your leg skewered. Your chest burnt. And I saw the look on your face when I hit you, ma'am. I'd hope no one would feel vindictive enough to be pleased by any of that. I hope I wouldn't," she adds after a beat. "I thought about it, and that kind of changed perspective may be the one positive thing to take away from my ordeal," Elly then agrees. "It must've been good for something, right? For more than just eight months' worth of pain and scars." "I'll be turning seventeen in precisely nine weeks," Elly responds. It's difficult to picture Ms Sanders at that age, though. There's something curiously counter-intuitive about the fact that adults used to be children once themselves. Doubly so with teachers; triply so with Blunt Trauma, who looks like she must have sprung fully grown and armed from the brow of some awesome, warlike deity. "Was it self-defence?" Elly can't help but ask when Ms Sanders brings up her own first killing. (The "first" is noted, but goes unremarked upon.) It's strangely reassuring to Elly that the teacher also had a person's death on her conscience at such a young age, that she knows what that feels like. But at the same time she experiences a sharp pang of pity and sympathy for the woman before her. Hardened though she may be now, the young Heather Sanders clearly wasn't, and Elly finds it all too easy to believe that the experience did leave her utterly terrified. "I'm sorry you had to go through that," she says softly, genuinely. "No one should have to. Least of all at that age." The girl looks down at her bracelet. "I was scared too, when I found out what I actually did. I guess I still am. It's one of the reasons I didn't use my powers today. Or at all, since last week. I don't know if it's safe again. And I never meant to do what I did." "My memories of it are a blur," Elly then admits. "I somehow overloaded and hurt my eyes. I was as good as blind. Getting out of the van was as much as I could manage. Though I did hear the screams. And feel the heat. And smell the…" Trailing off, she slowly shakes her head before looking at Ms Sanders again. "I went to take a look afterwards, though. I simply had to know what I'd done." She falls silent for a moment. "The driver looked awful, but he still was recognisably a human being at least," Elly says in a quiet voice, looking through the teacher now rather than at her. "I can still see the men who rode with me in the back of the van clearly enough. What's left of them. I see them grinning at me, and staring. They don't have eyes any more, but they're staring at me all the same. And while the rest of them is ashen and charred, their teeth are very white." She says nothing more for a while. Talking to somebody about it doesn't feel as liberating as she might have hoped. "Those memories will be with us for the rest of our lives, won't they?" Elly finally asks, though her tone suggests she knows the answer already. Disregarding the aside about her House Mother, Elly nods with what seems to be some reluctance. "I usually am quite calm and collected. That's just the way my mind works. Not so much in situations like those, maybe. But I hope that's something I can work on as well. That and getting my body to respond as quickly as I can think." She blinks. "But you have a point. The best I can do is prepare for the worst-case scenario, and trust that it'll be enough. So I will do that." "I think it's important, knowing how to defend ourselves. Even if that knowledge may not necessarily be used as intended by everyone." She guesses this was one of Ms Frost's misgivings, anyway. It is a reform school after all. While the non-Blues Elly has met so far seemed perfectly all right, she doesn't doubt that there are a few less savoury individuals among the student body as well. "I don't want to be the one to throw the first punch. I don't want to have to throw any punches at all, if it can be helped. But sometimes it can't. And it's those occasions I need to be ready for." When Blunt Trauma has reached and announced her decision, Elly nods immediately. "I understand, ma'am. I don't expect it to be easy. That would defeat the point." She looks at her hands. "It can't be as bad as what I had to go through. And if it means I'll never again be as defenceless as I was, if it means I can make a real difference and maybe save a life at some point down the road…that'll be worth the bruises and aches and the fatigue." Elly's eyes meet the teacher's again, and she gives her a small smile. "Thank you for agreeing to help me, Miss Sanders. Giving up an hour and a half of your free time each day, five days a week. I don't think any of my old teachers would've done anything like that for me."
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Aug 3, 2015 03:01
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"Soldering iron?" Gabrielle asks, still not quite getting it. "Spot welding." Alice bluntly interjects with a simile Gabby might get. "Oh. Okay." At least knowing what welding meant, she turns her attention back to Sarah. "I can shape it down pretty small, yeah." She wills forth a billowing fire cloud around her right hand, and takes a few moments to focus the burning storm into a focused tip. I might not be quite as small as a pencil tip, but it'd get the job done. Then the three girls get to work. Sarah directs the work efforts, being the most technically minded person on campus (whether and how you count Gloom in that may skew results). She can feel where every single, mangled scrap of metal and circuit board is meant to go, see it in her minds eye. Alice's various blue animal helpers act in place of tweezers and screwdrivers, holding bits and pieces in place and fitting the puzzle back together as told by Sarah. The girl herself seems enraptured by the deconstruction and reconstruction process. Then Gabby lights her fire, managing to both concentrate her fire down to a fine point and only melt where Sarah asks her to. She feels quite proud about it after it's all said and done. And… voilà! The bracelet was fixed, and unless Sarah's mechanical spider-sense was off it was working better than ever now. This thing could probably stop the Hulk if you slapped it over his pinky! ~ "It's seeing the mean teacher get what she deserves. You've probably only really gotten to know the girls in your house, but most of the other houses are going to pleased by that." Ms. Sanders explains, though she doesn't seem to really harbour any resentment towards being the mean teacher or getting what's coming to her. "Eight months?" That, however, does seem to agitate the House Mother. For a few seconds Elly feels that deadly, imposing presence that Blunt Trauma usually exudes. But they pass as she calms herself down. "There's good and bad in everything. Focusing on the bad gets you nowhere, trust me. I saw a lot of it in the Brotherhood. But seeing the good, even if it's just a tiny speck of light in nothing else but darkness, can get you through a lot of rough times." She tells Elly, no doubt from her own experience. "Nine weeks? Make sure you tell your housemates, I'm sure they'll want to plan a party for you." Tabby, if nobody else, would want to throw one for the newest Blue. "It was complicated. I mean, what do you consider self-defence for a girl who can jump in front of a train and not get hurt?" Ms. Sanders asks after an uncomfortable pause. "That's the worst part of it, every time I remember just knowing that everything that happened could have been avoided. I was never in serious danger. I could have walked away." She sighs. "But I wasn't the only one involved. My friends were there. My boyfriend was there. And they aren't tough like me, I had to so something. That something just happened to be my fist." She looks down at her hand, presumably the fist that did it. "I'm still sorry I went through that too, but I can't change the past and it's lead me to where I am now. I protected people I cared about, they're still here because of what I did." Despite her words, Ms. Sanders doesn't sound 100% convinced herself. "But you can't be scared of your powers, Elly. The only way you will be sure you won't do something like this again is if you know exactly what you can do, how far you can push it before it gets dangerous. And this is the safest place you're going to get to do that." Then, Ms. Sanders just lets Elly talk. Either she knew what Elly was going through or had drat good intuition, but she just let her talk out her experience. She listens, nods along, and doesn't judge as the memories of the crash slowly unravel for the newest Blue. "Maybe you're lucky your memories of it are a blur. Remembering it as vividly as I can isn't something anyone should have to go through." She offers with sympathies. "…the one thing that stands out the most isn't what I remember seeing. It's what I remember feeling. All the… chest I grabbed in my hand. And the weight after he died, I was keeping him standing up with my arm." Ms. Sanders gently relates, letting Elly go at her own pace. "Yeah, they are." She nods sadly. "Life isn't all roses. But you're going to come through this a stronger person, Elly." Ms. Sanders grins. "Well, you were calm and collected when you took me down I'll give you that." The mild humour does wonders to help cut through the tense atmosphere the grim subjects had bred. But she has to correct the girl. "With enough training, you don't need to think to fight. Your body will know what to do by muscle memory. But that's years away yet, we will have a lot of foundation work to get through first." "It's still a dangerous place out there for mutants." Ms. Sanders agrees, though without the vim and vigour she had out on the gym floor. In fact, she sighs. "You know, when I was with the Brotherhood all I was fighting for was a world where you were safe enough to not have to even think about this kind of thing. Show how much good we did, huh?" It's rhetorical, but even so it might explain why she was here now instead of still being a part of the Brotherhood. The Purple House Mother nods. "Good, because it won't be easy. But if you're as determined as I think you are, you'll be up to the challenge." She smiles. "No Elly, you won't be defenceless like that again." She rather firmly assures her. "I'm asking a lot of you, I'd be setting a bad example if I didn't give you my very best too. I enjoy teaching, and what kind of teacher would I be to turn a student away when they ask for help?"
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Aug 5, 2015 15:05
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Rickie Rickie feels a small pang of jealousy as Sarah apparently starts hitting it off with Alice. The artist had been attempting to be friends, or at least friendly, with everyone in the school. With some, it was difficult: Sherri exploded Rickie's illusions whenever she detected them, which had sort of become a good-natured rivalry on Rickie's side, at least. With Adara and Laqueta, she could be guardedly friendly one-on-one, but when the two were together (which was most of the time) it seemed to bring out the worst in all three of them. And Alice flattening Rickie's squirrels on the first day had set the tone for most of their interactions since. Although she never would've guessed the conjurer was a techie, and had mostly been meeting woodland creatures with woodland creatures. Which had horrified a few people at lunch when Alice had summoned a bear to maul the poo poo out of the muskox Rickie had ambling around the table. Still, despite the momentary jealousy, after a moment of watching Alice, Sarah, and Gabby work, Rickie realizes she doesn't have a monopoly on friendship and skips off to the showers, peeling as much of her pigment as she could off of the gym surfaces as she goes. Carefully funneling her excess down the drain, she finds herself wondering how much of the crystalline inclusions remain in the piping. It's no more harmful to the system than sand would be, but she produces a lot of it. "You know," she remarks, still watching her multicolored secretions swirl down the drain, "Worst comes to worst, I might wind up throwing the school's septic tank at something."
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Aug 7, 2015 02:59
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Elly "The notion just doesn't appeal to me. Glorying in someone's getting hurt. No matter what they did. And I'm not familiar with the other Houses yet, no. Though the Reds seem all right to me," she says. The sheer intensity that radiates off Blunt Trauma when Elly mentions the duration of her imprisonment, meanwhile, isn't lost even on her. It helps to be aware that it's not directed at her, of course. She nods mutely in response to the point finally made by the gym teacher. "I survived, though there quite possibly were others who didn't. I know what it's like to be treated like that now, and this will shape my future actions and decisions in life." She briefly meets Ms Sanders's eyes. "As far as lessons learnt the hard way are concerned, I expect I could do worse than that." "I don't think I want to. They really shouldn't be doing anything special for me," Elly responds, clearly not in favour of that idea. Although part of it is that she simply dislikes being the centre of attention. She then listens unblinkingly as the teacher relates the circumstances of her…incident, such as they are. "You did what you did because you wanted to keep your friends safe," Elly tells Blunt Trauma, trying to sound sympathetic. "You were young, and emotions likely were running high. If what I did was legally and morally acceptable, as it was according to the Headmistress, I don't feel that what you did was really any worse, Miss Sanders. I don't know about you, but when it comes down to it, I'd rather live with having taken a life than having failed to save one," Elly says before blinking again. "When I killed these men, it was because I genuinely feared I was experiencing the final conscious moments of my life. How can I find out the full extent of my powers if it takes an actual life-or-death situation for them to surface?" There's a slightly dubious look on Elly's face. "Other than that, and when the pain became too much during the months before, I remember everything that happened to me since my mutation emerged very clearly. Those missing memories are like spots of inexplicable darkness in a vast hall of infinite light. As silly as it may sound." Another blink. "That's as close as I can get to putting the sensation into words. My memory being less than flawless is somewhat disconcerting to me. It just shouldn't be that way." She says nothing for a while. "As awful as they are, it's a good thing that these memories stay with us the way they do, isn't it? That they haunt us. It's a sign that these deeds run counter to the empathic aspect of our human nature. If they didn't affect us, we'd probably be insane. Or callous to the point of being little more than automata." She recognises that much at least, in spite of being fairly automaton-like herself sometimes. "I suppose it's not, no. Although some roses every once in a while would be nice," Elly contends with a blink. "Even if, in a way, being brought to this school may be one of the best things that have happened to me in a long time." "It was a safe, controlled environment, and my life wasn't at stake," she counters with the slightest of shrugs. "And I had someone backing me up. And you were already weakened. It's not so difficult to be focused under such circumstances." She frowns a little. "I want to think. It's my biggest asset. If you'd had several hours to think about what to do, without more than a fraction of a second actually passing, would you still have put your fist through that man's chest?" she argues. "Acting instinctively is not without merit. I recognise its importance, and I will work on it. But as long as my body doesn't react as quickly as I can think, I'll always feel like I'm being held back. Handicapped. Not being everything I could be. And I don't want that." "I know very little about the Brotherhood," Elly admits. "Even after I became aware that I was a mutant myself, I took no special interest in anything pertaining to us. Maybe I didn't want to be further reminded of what I was, considering the negative attention I already received for it nearly every single day," she muses, and blinks. "I don't think there'll ever be peace. We don't live in that kind of world. Human nature doesn't allow for it. And I am including mutants in this, for the record." Elly regards her blood-stained sneaker. "Then again, human civilisation has endured this far, in spite of a very great deal of bloodshed and warfare. Perhaps being caught between peace everlasting on the one end of the spectrum and total annihilation on the other is as good as it's ever going to get." "You'd be an average teacher at best, from what I've seen. Though it did always strike me as a rather thankless profession. Which makes a lack of enthusiasm and dedication at least understandable." Elly smiles a little. "But after watching you endure everything that happened during the past hour, I think no one in their right mind would question your commitment to your job, ma'am. I certainly don't," she says, getting to her feet. "All right. You're not going to go easy on me, and I'll give you everything I've got. Sounds good to me. It's a deal. When do we start?" Elly asks. "That said, I should probably get going. Miss Lang's first impression of me shouldn't be my being late for class." She gives Blunt Trauma another small smile. "Thank you, Miss Sanders. For all of this." "Surely this kind of eventuality must've been taken into account when the school was built?" Elly responds to Rickie, having hurried along to take a quick shower herself. Not so much because she absolutely needed one, but because she values cleanliness very highly. Which makes some sense given that she can spot a single grain of dust from a hundred feet away. "It might have ended up with, say, a student whose every bodily fluid was highly acidic, for all anyone knew at the time. Or one who was extraordinarily hairy and shed a great deal," she muses, gingerly drying off the burnt skin on her face. "There has to be some heavy-duty plumbing in place. I'd hope the same went for the school's furnishings and structural integrity as well, for that matter."
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Aug 7, 2015 04:28
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Rickie "The Powers classroom," Rickie pauses a moment to run her face under the shower and scrub, "is half a mile underground in order to comply with nuclear testing regulations."
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Aug 7, 2015 05:05
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Elly "I don't know whether wastewater is held to such exacting regulations as nuclear weapons, but this sounds encouraging at least," Elly says; then, suddenly freezing, she blinks at Rickie. "Did you say half a mile underground?"
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Aug 7, 2015 05:31
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Rickie "Yeah, there's an elevator and everyth-" Rickie also freezes (Getting an earful of water) as the note in Elly's voice registers. Several data points lock together into a mildly cringe-worthy whole. "...You're claustrophobic, aren't you." she scratches her head as she gets out of the shower and grabs a towel. "I want to say it's not that bad, but I know that won't exactly help. The elevator's disguised as an entire classroom, and the actual classroom is well-lit and open- Hell, one of Gloom's favorite holo-scenarios is a sunny beach- but..." She trails off, aware that the very knowledge of a couple thousand feet of rock and dirt overhead could make things a little hinky. She vigorously towels to fill time while she thinks. "On the bright side, now you know about it and won't have a panic attack specifically because of getting suddenly shoved underground. If you do start getting concerned, panicky, whatnot, flag down Professor Gloom's faithful minion, Spider-Bot. She'll help. Gloom, though, total, cackling, fools-I-will-destroy-you-all mad."
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Aug 7, 2015 06:51
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Elly "Self-diagnosed, strictly speaking, as I haven't seen a doctor about it, " Elly nods weakly. "I didn't realise until after my escape that being outside felt so much better. It used not to be an issue. But now…" She blinks nervously. "That's why I haven't been spending more time in our dorm than I had to. Not to avoid you all or anything like that." Rickie's words, though meant to assuage Elly's mounting unease, only elicit a grimacing smile from the other girl. Perhaps she was a little too quick to tell Ms Sanders that this school was one of the best things to happen to her in the recent and not-so-recent past. "All right, I'll keep it in mind. Talk to the spider-bot. Not to Professor Gloom. Because she's crazy. And half a mile underground. Or two thousand six hundred and forty feet. Which is about eighty thousand four hundred and sixty-seven centimetres. And assuming an average bulk density of soil of one point five grams per cubic centimetre, that means there are…" Elly trails off, blinking several times in rapid succession. "Umm. Anyway. Thanks, Rickie. For the words you just said. Now, if you'll excuse me? I need some fresh air. To breathe in. With my lungs. Outside. Yes. À tout de suite, everyone," she distractedly announces, briefly slipping into French for no apparent reason. On that somewhat abrupt note the newest Blue turns and makes for the locker room. Towelling herself off rather cursorily on the way there, she all but dives into her clothes and bursts out of the gymnasium barely a minute later. Her shirt is on backwards, her untied shoelaces are trailing behind her, and her clothes are just a little wet in places thanks to her less than thorough towelling efforts. But that doesn't matter to Elly right now. She is outside, and there's no ceiling above her head and no walls around her pressing in, and there are no hidden alcoves to conceal calmly businesslike men and women wearing aseptic coveralls who might come and sedate her and put her back in that chair. No, there are none of these things. None at all. So Elly takes a few minutes to just stand on the grass and revel in their complete absence, her head and eyes upturned to take in the far, reassuring sky. MMAgCh fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Aug 11, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 22:13
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Sarah "Yeah, just - last spot right... there!" It wasn't exactly the most dazzling of superhero team-ups (certainly no Fastball Special) but in terms of practical effect it more than stood its ground. The nullifier was fully working again - better than ever, as far as "not being a heap of slag" equated to "better". There were a couple more high-fives - with the stabbing pain reminding Sarah again that Blunt Trauma had really done a number on her. "Cheers guys. Can one you take it in to Teach? I really want to hit up the MediShed. I'll catch up to you all later - and Alice? Death ray. Let me know when you want to take a look at it." The bluff of fake cheer exhausted, Sarah slips away from both houses. Between ribs that felt decidedly tender and her new abilities the MediShed was hardly the best resource to be consulting. Still, it was all there was. Besides, Tabby was still bundled up there. Despite all her authority and status as The (Wo)Man, it'd be good to talk with someone who wasn't beating the living crap out of her.
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Aug 9, 2015 23:57
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