ic Head in the Game

[Mad Scientist]

As time went on and they progressed with decent speed across the city, Wildcat found himself not only losing his nervousness at the current encounter, but actually coming to enjoy himself.  There was a certain something about this game of follow the leader across the nighttime rooftops, and the fact that he was, in essence, pursuing a capable female stirred him to keep up.

 

And so, when the question came about taking the safe walkway across the bridge or daring to climb the heights on the thick cables in the gloom of the night, he flashed her a toothy white grin and took the lead.  He bounded onto the cables in a single leap, and keeping his balance with agility moved with surprising speed up the arcing cable toward the first of the tower supports.  He had never done this before, but at the moment he felt he could hardly do anything but.

[Electra]

Wander chuckled wryly and followed him up with the confidence of someone who had done the same trick many times before. It was easy enough to walk it at first, if one considered tightrope-walking on a slanting cable the width of a coffee can to be easy, but as they got closer to the top, the cables tilted at a sharper angle and they both hand-over-hand climbed to the broad flat top of the bridge support. "See, you can take in practically the entire city from here," she pointed out, taking a second to enjoy the view. "The Grue damn near took this thing out a couple years ago, but we managed to save it, and then Doctor Metropolis put it back together. Now you'd never know it was practically wrecked. That's the nice thing about this city, it bounces back. Buildings and people, both. Were you around for the whole thing with the Grue? Man, that would be back before the Communion Incursion, before the Gorgon threat, before the Day of Wrath, but after the demonic invasion, which you wouldn't remember anyway, so never mind." She shook her head. "Hard to keep it all straight." 

[Mad Scientist]

The view was, as promised, amazing, and Wildcat took a long moment just surveying the cityscape.  Even at night there was a lot to see, and he wondered if he'd have the guts to come do this in broad daylight someday.

 

Wander's question dragged his attention back to the here and now, and he turned away from the city to look at her, the scent of her filling his head at this close range.

 

"Uh, the Grue?  Yeah, I was in the city then, but I wasn't doing any of..."  He gestured to take in their position and the city spread out before and behind.

 

"...this.  My family and I, we just kept our heads down and let the heroes do their thing, hoping we'd come through okay.  I wanted to--"

 

He broke off abruptly, vividly recalling how he had felt.  These alien blobs were invading his home, trying to take over his city, and every fibre of him had wanted to take the fight to them, tear into them and make them hurt until they just left what was his alone and get the hell out of his territory.

 

It had been...terrifying.  He knew, knew, that if he had gone out there and tried anything of the sort, he likely wouldn't have come back again.  He had been a teenager, and while he could do more than most, he certainly wouldn't have been up to interfering on that level.  He...wasn't quite that bad these days, thank God.

 

"...demonic invasion?" he repeated, in agreement that he didn't remember any such thing.  "What happened there?" he asked, curious in spite of himself.

[Electra]

"One of my friends at school was the son of a fairly major demon in one of the hell dimensions," Wander explained matter-of-factly. "He didn't get along with his dad, wanted to be a hero and not a demon, but his dad needed him, as an Earth Prime native, to summon him so he could bring about Armageddon. So his dad managed to kidnap him, drag him to hell, and torture him until he was brainwashed enough to forget his friends and want to open the portal to hell. So he did, and demons started just flooding into the city, basically everywhere. Destroying things, killing people, it was pretty horrific." She looked out over the city, remembering how it had looked in those horrible hours

 

"Anyway, we on Young Freedom went to face off against him and we managed to remind him of who he was and what he wanted to be, and we managed to defeat his dad and close the portal. And as soon as it was gone, time started... rewinding, sort of. Like everything that had happened, hadn't actually happened, and only the heroes who were fighting and a few others managed to remember anything. That was back in, oh, 2010 I guess, so it's been awhile. It definitely wasn't our worst disaster, but it was the first one I was around for, so that makes it especially memorable." 

[Mad Scientist]

Wildcat shook his head ruefully.

 

"Makes me wonder just what I think I'm doing out here," he told her with a touch of asperity.  "I mean, what would I do if demons started pouring out of a hole in space.  Hit them with a stick?" he asked her, his tone very dry, and a little frustrated.  "That's why I'm thinking it's best I just keep my head down in my own little corner of the city, keeping the people safe.  I can make a gang banger think twice before causing trouble, or deal with something that crawls out of the sewers.  But alien invasions?  Demons?  Super villains?"

 

He shook his head.

 

"I appreciate what you're doing for me here, I really do.  I'm just hoping for everyone's sake that it's never important that you did," he told her quietly, turning to look out over the waters again.  Nobody liked admitting there were things that were far too large for them to handle, but...well, he had to be realistic here.

[Electra]

"Don't think about it like that. If I saw demons pouring out of a hole right now, you think I'd be leaping right out to fight them?" Wander pointed out. "I'd be on my communicator in half a second, calling every other hero I know. Nobody's on their own out here, that's how we stay alive. That's why we win." She waved an arm towards the city. "There's all kinds of heroes here, and some have powers and some have no powers and some have crazy powers that are a little scary even to me. The point is, everybody does something. If you're out patrolling one night and you see something big and bad and you call me and I call the Liberty League and we fight it, you saved the day too." 

 

"Besides," she added archly, "you'll get better with practice. Sometimes you find you can do things you never realized until you're pressed to the wall. And hitting stuff with a stick can be surprisingly effective. Come on." She headed for the cables again, but this time chose the center cable, which had two sets of support cables at shoulder height for safer descent. Down was harder than up, after all. 

[Mad Scientist]

Wildcat followed in her wake, and if the descent was any more difficult than the ascent for him, it didn't show -- and that fact clearly delighted him. He had know his agility and balance were above-par, but he had never put them to the test like this, and the fact that he was, indeed, up to the challenge was...affirming.

Once they were to a position where further conversation was once again convenient, he gave her a sidelong look.

"So...does that mean I'm supposed to ask you for your phone number?" he inquired, keeping his delivery as deadpan as he could manage.

[Electra]

She snorted, the corners of her lips quirking up. "Yeah, I'll give you the Liberty League's contact number, that way you can catch us no matter who is working or available at any given time." She slowed to a ground-eating walk as they left the bridge, heading down the sidewalks of Bayview close to the school. "We all have jobs or school and stuff, so we sort of pass around the responsibility of answering the phone. You got a cell phone on you? I haven't got pen and paper on me, and I always forget my cards." She shrugged. "These uniforms don't leave a lot of room to put stuff in your pockets when you head out." 

[Mad Scientist]

At it happened, the outfit that Wildcat had put together did have plenty of pocket space, military designers being great fans of utility in their clothing.

 

"As a matter of fact," he admitted, and pulled an Otterboxed iPhone out of one leg pocket on his BDU pants.  It was the best he had been able to figure on how to keep his phone from getting utterly destroyed the first time something went other than as planned, and he checked yet again to make sure that it was set on vibrate before unlocking and opening a new Contact page.

 

Given that this was going in his, y'know, personal phone and all, he probably shouldn't label it anything like 'Liberty League', though.  Just for safety's sake.

 

Entering 'Libby', he looked up expectantly at Wander, thumb poised over the phone's face.

[Electra]

Wander rattled off the number for him, all the while reminding herself to stick a few more cards in her pocket. Mark was all about networking with other heroes and hero teams, and she could definitely see the point, but sometimes she missed the days when they'd just been Young Freedom. No business cards or anything, just the world's most dangerous after-school job. "And I'll give you my number too, just in case you ever need it," she decided on the spot. "I usually keep it with me, but if a guy answers, it's my boyfriend Midnight and he's on the team too, so that works." She gave him the second number as well. "Never hurts to have other heroes on the speed dial. You'll probably run into more as you keep patrolling, especially in the West End. That's Interceptors territory." 

[Mad Scientist]

Entering the number as it was given, Wildcat was startled when Wander then proceeded to actually give him her personal number, as he had joked.  Before he had a chance to embarrass himself, however, in the same breath she mentioned that her superhero boyfriend might answer as well.

 

Well, of course.  That was only to be expected, right?

 

"I, uh, hope that never causes any problems," he told her with a touch of nerves.  He couldn't imagine being okay with any girl of his just giving out her number blithely to guy she just met, regardless of circumstances.  He made a mental note to check out this 'Midnight' if and when they crossed paths, if the Interceptors were going to be running around in his neighbourhood.

 

"I'd ask how you were going to get in touch with me in return, but I don't imagine you'd ever really need to, right?" he asked her ruefully, locking and pocketing the phone again, making sure the pocket was well-secured, so he didn't lose it.

 

"All right, we should probably get going, if you're going to have any time to kick my ass for my own benefit, right?" he suggested.

[Electra]

"Don't worry, there won't be a problem," Wander assured him, stifling a laugh at the idea of Trevor jealous over a phone call from another superhero. "And you can send me a text message or something, then I'll have you in my phone. We're almost there." Sure enough, another couple of blocks brought them to the tall and stately red brick wall that marked the boundaries of the Claremont Academy. Wander jogged halfway down the wall to one of the security cameras and waved up at it. "Hello, Headmaster, it's Wander. Just dropping by to help a new guy with some training. We'll be on the field." 

 

With that, she leapt neatly to the top of the wall and over to the other side, then waited for Wildcat to join her. Even in the dark, Claremont was an attractive campus, tree-lined paths wending from building to building, a wide green quad marking the center of campus. It was very quiet now, though Erin was sure there were a few young supers out and about, probably on their own patrols. She led the way behind the buildings to a grassy field with both soccer goals and football uprights on each end. "Here we are." 

[Mad Scientist]

Wildcat didn't bother touching down atop the wall, instead clearing it entirely and landing in a crouch on the grassy interior.  His nostrils flared as he took in traces of scents from the day's use of the compound, and his ears picked out various small noises of night life and local fauna.

 

"Was the Headmaster monitoring that camera?" he wondered aloud as he rose to his full height again.  "Or was that sort of a...security camera voice mail?" he asked, amused by the concept.  He followed Wander's lead warily, not so much worried about being attacked or ambushed by anyone as....

 

Well.  It was a high school for new supers.  He was sort of worried about being attacked or ambushed, albeit not so much maliciously as mischievously.

 

"This...looks like a soccer field," he noted as they arrived, checking out the nets and the uprights.  "Truly, this is a marvel of training genius," he added wryly.  While he hadn't had any particular ideas in mind, he realized he'd been expecting something a little...unusual...out of the superkid school.

[Electra]

"Your powers of observation don't need any honing," she replied with a quick grin. "It is indeed a soccer field, and football, kickball, we once played a particularly intense game of capture the flag here as well. Most of the real powers training takes place underground in the simulator, but I don't have access to that anymore, at least not without coming during normal hours and asking nicely. As for whether the headmaster is watching... better safe than sorry, right? And it's polite, even if it's just a teacher or security guard watching the cameras tonight." 

 

She bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, testing the springiness of the ground. "Anyway, simple is better for early training, anything else will just distract you. Show me how you stand to fight." 

[Mad Scientist]

He flashed her a quick grin in spite of himself.

 

"If simple is better, then I must be the best," he joked, although the quick change of direction directly to the 'training' sobered him somewhat, and he put on his game face.  Which wasn't difficult to do -- falling into a 'fight' mindset was all too easy a task for him.

 

He dropped into his 'combat crouch' -- left leg advanced, right leg trailing, knees slightly bent and feet about shoulder width apart.  He hunched forward a touch to reduce the visible cues his centre of mass might give, and his hands were spread slightly from his sides, fingers flexed.

 

Just...assuming that pose, for an audience, made him feel more than a little foolish, however, and combined with taking on a combative stance he had to wrestle momentarily with himself to keep this from becoming something that might prompt him to go too far.  He hated feeling antsy, but being on display like this made his skin itch.

[Electra]

"That's pretty good," Wander nodded, "once the fight actually starts. Maybe a little lower than I'd go myself, but I'll bet you like to lunge to attack, right? Push from the legs so you can get in close with your body right away? The stick is good, but it's not your first instinct," she guessed, stepping around him to check his form. "The problem with a stance like this is that once you're in it, you've given yourself away. Anybody can see that you're in fighting mode now. Before the fight starts, you still need to be ready to fight, just not so obvious about it. Here." 

 

Wander's posture barely changed from the way she'd been standing before, but something about her suddenly twigged all of Wildcat's predatory senses. She balanced evenly on the balls of both feet, arms held at her sides with just the faintest of tension, her knees bent ever so slightly as she watched him. "Fighters will know," she told him. "Watching people react to you can let you know who in a group is a threat. And from here," she drew her bat in the blink of an eye, deepening the bend in her knees and drawing the baton into a defensive position, "you can go into a real stance basically instantly." 

[Mad Scientist]

Fine hairs rose abruptly on Wildcat's neck as Wander shifted from 'teacher' to 'threat' with no apparent effort on her part, and he had to swallow down the snarl that reflexively tried to rise in his throat.  She wasn't actually being a threat, he assured himself, she was just demonstrating.  Everything was fine, he didn't need to take the first action to avoid being at a disadvantage.

 

Really.

 

"That...makes sense," he told her, and was all too aware that his voice had lowered a noticeable notch.  "I mean, I don't do a lot of standing around out in plain sight before the fighting starts, but I see what you mean."  Truth be told, swarming over someone from ambush was his preferred method of doing things -- no matter what else he was, he was far from bulletproof.  Or knife proof.  Or most any sort of proof, really.

 

He copied her stance as best he could, trying to look nonchalant yet at the same time ready to shift his weight as required.  She was right, of course -- his instinct was far from anything like going for his baton in a fight, but he carried it more as insurance rather than because he thought he would need it.  Given his options, he wanted his hands on an opponent.  Using his hands now might mean being able to keep from using his teeth later....

[Electra]

"If you can get a tactical advantage from hiding, that's awesome, definitely use it," Wander agreed, abruptly relaxing from her alert pose and planting one end of her staff on the ground like a walking stick. "But at least sometimes you're probably going to find yourself actually facing off against a bad guy. Bad guys like to get recognition for their evil plans," she explained, reciting back what she'd learned in her own Tactics classes. "If you need to get information from a bad guy, a lot of times all you have to do is stand there and look like you're frustrated but not quite ready to attack yet. Then they'll start gloating, and they'll tell you where the hostages are, or how their evil machine works, or where the secret plans are hidden. It doesn't always work, but often enough to be worth a try in some situations." 

 

She took a few steps back, putting a couple of yards between them and keeping her bat held nonaggressively. "All right, say I'm a bad guy and I've seen you coming, but we haven't engaged yet. How do you come at me?" 

[Mad Scientist]

The urge that was on the tip of his tongue was 'charge straight in', but he fought it back.  That might be satisfying, but it wasn't necessarily smart.

 

"That...depends," he replied slowly.  "On the bad guy.  I'm not going to close with somebody made of lava, for example," he told her, although that departed the realm of 'tactics' and into 'common sense'.  "Shall I assume that the 'bad guy' is you?" he inquired.

 

He...was having more trouble with this than he'd expected.  This was, in most respects, one of his first encounters as an adult with someone who he considered a physical equal, if not superior.  He knew how to cope with management-style superiority at work, but this...?

 

His instincts weren't sure if he should submit to her, try to drive her from his territory, or try and mate with her.  It was decidedly unsettling, and a surprising amount of his focus was on remaining civilized.  He was not going to act like an animal, no matter what his...urges...were telling him.

[Electra]

"Yeah, go ahead," she told him. "There's a whole different way you have to approach people who you can't hit without hurting yourself, and my preferred style is definitely "make friends with somebody who has blasting or laser or fire powers." It'll save you a lot of wear and tear in the long run. But most of the folks you'll meet, you'll probably be able to at least touch them without hurting yourself."

 

Wander shifted her stance a little, not quite combative but not relaxed either. She didn't really think Wildcat was a threat, but her instincts were nagging her about his increasing near-subliminal aggressiveness.  "Say someone like me is your enemy, a brawler and a speeder. Say also that we're pretty evenly matched, so you don't have reason to think I'll wipe the floor with you... or you with me," she added for politeness' sake. "What do you do?" 

[Mad Scientist]

While Wildcat wasn't, strictly speaking, wholly limited to the need to touch an opponent, he didn't feel it was necessary to reveal that just yet, if at all.  He appreciated that Wander was going out of her way -- literally -- to give him some pointers, but that didn't mean he wasn't feeling a little uneasy at how much about him she knew already.

 

He wasn't sure he was going to send her a text at all to give her his number -- if he was, it was most definitely going to be from a secondary phone he started using purely for heroing purposes, a 'burner' was what TV called them anyhow.

 

"Well," he replied, thinking aloud, "I don't want to come straight at you.  It's predictable, it limits what you have to do to respond to me, and it's the go-to for anyone who doesn't know what they're doing, so if you have any skill at all, you have a standard response prepared for the straight-forward approach."  At least, he felt his reasoning was sound, there.

 

"So, ideally, I do something unexpected," he went on, his gaze flicking up and down over her.  "Use a distraction, or come at you from an unexpected direction. 'If you find yourself in a fair fight, something has gone horribly wrong'," he quoted in paraphrase, smiling slightly.

[Electra]

"That's exactly right," she told him with a quick smile. "If you can fake somebody out, even for half a second, that's enough of an opening. That's one of the things I learned here at the school, that and the acrobatics to manage it pretty consistently. Like if I had a bad guy right here." She described a circle in the grass with her bat, then faced off with it as though an opponent were standing there. If she were with one of her friends, she'd have demonstrated on them, but she suspected that Wildcat would not like it much. Come to think of it, he reminded her a little of herself when she was just getting started, naturally talented, but with too much power to control reliably and hair-trigger reflexes that tended to go off at all the wrong times. 

 

"A lot of melee is done face to face on level ground, so that's what they expect. It can give you an edge." She feinted with her bat, once, twice, then made a ten foot standing leap with a twisting somersault in the middle, landing on her feet on the opposite side of the circle, with her bat extended to where the opponent's head would be. "You're a good jumper, you could probably use that to your advantage in a fight." 

[Mad Scientist]

Wildcat took a deep breath, and told his nerves to go shove off -- he was busy.  He'd been on-edge enough during their trip out here that he'd come across as far more inept than he was comfortable with, and that...didn't sit well with him.

 

Drawing a circle in the grass with his foot, he faced off against it, mirroring her demonstration from moments before.  He feinted once, twice, and then executed a very similar standing leap, including a lateral roll at the top of his arc, and came down with what YouTube had shown him was an 'axe kick' through the middle of the circle from behind.

 

Straightening, he got both feet under himself again and regarded her steadily.

 

"You mean like that?" he asked mildly, and tried hard not to sound smug.

[Electra]

"Good," she nodded. "Make sure you're keeping your weight centered as you deliver the kick, there's a surprising amount of recoil when you're connecting with a body and it could unbalance you. Keep your standing knee bent and you'll be ready to do another flip if you've got to get out of the way of something." She planted the end of her bat in the grass and leaned on it, regarding him steadily. "So what made you decide to take up the whole heroing gig in the first place?" she asked. 

[Mad Scientist]

Well, there was, of course, the most pressing of the reasons he had decided to do so, but he didn't have the feeling that explaining 'I needed an outlet for my base aggressions, so I skulk about and beat up on crooks and bangers' would go over quite as well as...well, numerous other explanations.

 

"Well, as I see it, the vast majority of people in the world are 'just folks', and they always have to end up keeping their heads down when everything hits the fan, or relying on a police force that's chronically underfunded and usually busy," he explained.  "I'm not Captain Thunder or anything, but I've got a lot more going for me than most people do.  I figure if we, the capable, aren't willing to get out there to protect our own, what right do we have to complain that someone else isn't doing it for us?" he asked.

 

"I mean, my parents live in the city, and I'd be crushed if anything ever happened to my mom.  And, well...everybody's got a mom, and I'm sure they'd feel the same way.  So, I'm looking out for where I can make a difference, and hopefully the world's a little better of a place than it was."

 

He'd...never come right out and said that to someone before.  It was...both oddly unsettling, and liberating at the same time.