Scuffles

As the screams of the second German strike team made it clear just how effective the team of Ghost Girl and Wraith could be, Glow rose into the air above the doorway that the Tronikians were intent on guarding. She knew it made her a target, but that was the whole point - gunfire directed at her was far less of a worry than gunfire directed at her friends. Wreathed in light she brought herself to a hover just as the last team of soldiers emerged from the edge of the icy fog. A moment later a flurry of powerful mental punches descended on the group and dropped all but one of them senseless on the ground. "Five down!" the telekinetic reported into her commlink as she stared down the remaining soldier. "Glad I'm not that guy!"

Move action: Fly up a little for a nice view where any remaining bad guys will be able to see her. And shoot at her. Standard action: Glow can take ten on an attack roll with her area-effect Telekinesis 7 power (with +1 power attack) for a 16 to hit the whole group at once. Toughness save would be DC23.

Kristin breathed a small sigh of relief as she watched her two friends apologize and shake hands. She hadn't really been sure how to get them past the initial hostilities, but everything seemed to have turned out quite nicely. She gave Elias a small grin when he looked at her, then decided to break the remaining tension properly. "Alright, I expect I deserve a punching or two for being so sneaky and manipulative to drag the pair of you here," she chuckled. "So how about we get a few rounds of sparring in? I chose the gym for a reason after all!" She grinned at Elias again. "And once Kat gets too tired from kicking our butts around the ring I do have a couple of ideas to try with that telekinesis of yours."

Kristin had been too nervous to take a seat while Jennifer took her last shots, and exclaimed "Huh, what are we doing about the whole bet thing if it's a tie?" when Jennifer was left the almost impossible seven-ten split to finish the game. It certainly looked like a tie was the likely result, but as she leaned against the ball return to watch the her date throw the deciding shot she could feel her own heartbeat quicken and the butterflies start up in her stomach once again. As the ball spun its way down the alley Kristin could tell that Jennifer had tried for both and she chewed on her lip as it gave the seven-pin the faintest of faint clips - not enough to fell it! On instinct the Australian teen reached out towards the pin with her mind as it wobbled. Without even a hint of leaking green light she gave it a nudge as Jenn turned back towards her with a disappointed look - and the pin clattered noisily as it toppled over, then rolled towards the still standing ten-pin in what felt like slow motion. The telekinetic did her best to look innocent and amazed as the rolling seven-pin bumped up against the last upright pin just barely hard enough to tip it into the gutter. "You are such a luckbox!" she grinned at Jennifer as nervousness and anticipation clashed and left her feeling slightly unsteady on her feet. "There's no way that should have gone down, let alone collected the other one too!"

Kristin had her drink in one hand and the other hand pressing keys on the computer control pad when Jennifer turned around from her attempt on the spare. She looked up guiltily and gave Jenn a grin as she said "I'm definitely not changing my first frame score to a strike!". She set her drink aside and stood up to take her next shot. "Mostly because the dumb computer won't let me!" Competitive as always she gave her date a little hip-bump and stuck out her tongue at her on the way past to collect her ball, then lined up in a passable imitation of the stance that Jennifer had taken while visualising her shot. "You copied my score," she proclaimed. "So I'll copy your technique!" The ball was delivered from a similar five-step approach, but the imitation clearly cost the telekinetic teen some accuracy and she missed the front pin. Six still scattered and clattered on their way down and left a far easier target for the spare. "Pfft, your technique doesn't work!" she complained jokingly as she waited for her ball to return.

Kristin managed to find a blue ten-pound ball that fit her small hand fairly well, and hefted it experimentally before she decided it would do. After a brief pause to raid the plate of nachos, then grinned at 'sneaky' Jennifer. "I shall now commence your crushing defeat with a strike!" she announced grandly, then stepped up and delivered the ball down the alley. The ball struck the centre pin cleanly and clattered through the middle of the frame. Seven pins tumbled, but unfortunately for Kristin the rightmost pin and the two leftmost pins remained upright and unwavering. "I changed my mind obviously," the Australian teen remarked as she turned back towards her date with her hands on her hips. "Instead I will commence your crushing defeat by leaving myself an impossible spare and lulling you into a false sense of security!" After her ball returned from the back she took her second shot and cleaned up the pins on the left to complete a respectable score of nine for her first turn. "Top that sneaky!" she challenged with a chuckle.

Kristin reached out to put a hand on Kat's shoulder and opened her mouth to speak - then shut it quickly when Elias rejoined the conversation. She looked over at him and gave the younger girl a reassuring squeeze on her arm as he walked back over. As she listened to Elias she chewed on her bottom lip, rather relieved that he seemed more relaxed and willing to engage Kat in conversation. Now if she could just get Kat to relax a little... "And what do you think Dorothy said about you to the headmaster behind closed doors after Vrix dragged her out of the dorm, Kat?" she asked quietly. "None of us are really safe if you look at it a certain way. I'm a mutant, I can lift a cargo ship just by thinking at it real hard. You can be wherever you like in an instant, you hit like a truck, he's a telepath and he struggles with some things most people take for granted because of how he was brought up." She looked back and forth between the pair and gave Kat another squeeze on the shoulder. "When I first came here I couldn't have a roommate and everything in my room had to be screwed to the floor," she said. "Every time I had a dream stuff rattled around like crazy. Even when I got a roommate I scared the hell out of her a couple of times. We're all here to get better at what we're bad at. I don't move stuff in my sleep anymore. You've got your teleporting nailed down. Elias won't barge into a girl's room again. When he says he doesn't regret it I don't think he means 'I would do the same thing again', I think he means 'I did it, there's no point in dwelling on it, I'll do better next time. Right Elias?" "So he screwed up, he hurt you even," she finished with a little edge to her tone. "Do you judge him forever? Brand him monster and be done with it?" It was a cheap shot to use Dorothy's words and Kristin knew it, but she wanted Kat to think on it. "Or do you give him a chance to learn from the mistake?"

"Oh only a clean game!" Kristin groused in a tone that conveyed her amusement and dripped sarcasm at the same time. She didn't really mind overmuch - after all, as nervous as she was about the idea a kiss as the forfeit for losing sounded like a pretty nice consolation prize. Her competitive streak meant she certainly wasn't going to let Jennifer have it all her own way though. "I'm so changing your name on the scoreboard to 'sneaky Jenn' for a stitch-up like this! The moment your back is turned!" She grinned again when Jennifer mentioned snacks, and chuckled "Do you really have to ask if I want snacks?" just as the 'strike' sound and lighting effects went off on a nearby lane and made her look over her shoulder in a slightly skittish manner. "Wow that's kinda loud. And oh so cheesy! I love this place!"

Kristin winced inwardly as Elias described what it was like to live with his abilities. She had known that they were problematic at times, but she knew that she had just seen a glimpse of what it must be like. It was no wonder that the boy was so solitary. She hoped that Eve and Vrix could help him get a handle on things, and made a mental note to call the young Frenchwoman later - likely she already knew the extent of the troubles Elias dealt with, but it couldn't hurt to check. With her arms folded across her chest she looked over at Kat. "He wasn't peeking into the heads of girls, he was finding out who attacked you." she pointed out. "And he did it knowing he would suffer for it. You still think you're so right that you don't need to talk it through?" She eyed the younger girl impassively. While she still thought the pair needed to work through their differences she wasn't going to push the issue further - there wasn't any point in making Elias suffer further if Kat was just going to rage at him - so she just let the telepath walk away.

"Lovely to meet you too," Kristin replied to Megan with a smile, then grinned at Agnus and her oh-so-familiar question. "I get that a bit," she admitted. "I managed to make the news with my fifteen minutes of fame when I had an accidental telekinetic outburst after a car accident, and I think there's a phone-camera video starring me on youtube with about half a billion hits. Of course there's a journalist who wants to stretch out the fifteen minutes - he'd love you to believe that I'm a walking disaster zone that wrecks cities left right and center." She smiled again and glanced at Jennifer. "Of course maybe you've just seen a photo of me holding hands with Jenn," she said with a smile as she reached over and slipped her arm through the gap between the older woman's elbow and hip to do just that. "If you try hard enough you can make it into a scandal!" she grinned, her tone still good-natured but with a hard edge of sarcasm.

With her mouth already open to protest Jennifer's lack of faith in her driving ability, Kristin froze in place when the other girl named her half of the bet. "Well played," she admitted after a second or two. "I didn't even see that coming at all. But alright, you're on!" Butterflies danced in her stomach as she followed her sneaky sneaky date up the stairs, but she did her best to ignore them and asked "Who calls a kid Stormy anyway?", then froze again as she got a good look at the bowling bag Jennifer carried. "Wait, you have your own bowling ball? You totally just sharked me didn't you?" she chuckled. "If you turn up and bowl like a three hundred after your whole 'I'm so bad at bowling' line I'm going to kick your butt!"

I really should get to doing a rep table. I'm so slack. Megan would definitely know that Kristin's telekinetic, that's pretty much a given. If she's inclined to watch such things she's probably seen the video of her accidental first power use. She would also know that Kristin attends Claremont and that she moved to the states so that she could have access to more people who could help her control and prevent unintended use of her telekinesis. And that Kristin semi-regularly visits the Lab for assessment. She would know that Jack Jackson prints unflattering things about her all the time. She would also know that Jackson has accused Kristin of being the Superheroine Glow and provided a load of circumstantial evidence to back up that theory but no actual hard proof. Kristin naturally flat out denies this and and points out that Glow is far far more powerful than she is despite the vague similarity between their abilities. Oh and she's dating Jennifer. Surprise! :o

Initiative: 10. Slow Glow is slow.

Glow spat a rather uncharacteristic curse under her breath. That's my fault, we should have ridden shotgun on the guy until he was locked away securely. I hope he didn't hurt anyone... She recovered her composure relatively quickly though. "That's okay, now we get him for resisting arrest as well Mister Cloak. And we dealt with him once, we can surely deal with him again." The young heroine turned to her companion. "We can both take Cloak to the station, they should be able to point us in the right direction from there." she said. "We need to find out where he got loose and how - whether he had help or he did it by himself. No sense jumping in blind. And besides, he's a coward really, likely he's just going to run for it back to the border. Not that it'll help him much."

Kristin eyed Rogue cautiously, then looked at the crates uncomfortably. While she wasn't an expert on psychology or Tronikians in general the woman sounded like she was willing to go to extremes, and if the biological weapon truly was as dangerous as Soldat seemed to think then the collateral damage would be immense even if there was a cure on hand. Worse, it didn't sound like the woman even cared that huge numbers of innocent people might die. Her willingness to talk about what might amount to genocide so coldly was a truly frightening thing. "How can you even target the use of this stuff in a war like this?" she asked in support of Mali and Indira. "It's not like there's clean battle-lines drawn up, every single place that might be a good target is going to have allies or innocents nearby, you'd end up killing as many people on your own side as you would enemies." "Surely there's better ways to make war than to use weapons that kill indiscriminately?" she asked quietly, her eyes fixed firmly on the Tronikian leader.

Kristin did have to admit that the day at the spa had been wonderfully relaxing. She wasn't about to admit it though. She took the glass Jennifer handed her, but regarded it suspiciously rather than taking a sip. With no idea if the drink was alcoholic or not she elected to simply hold onto it for the moment. Being ejected from the party for under-age drinking definitely didn't seem like a good goal for the evening after all. The young Australian stood next to her date and smiled politely at Megan, Amir, Agnus and Annice in turn as they were introduced. She nudged Jennifer subtly in the ribs, then spoke up herself. "Well are you going to introduce me?" she asked innocently, then continued with the slightest hint of an edge to her tone. "You better not call me 'and guest' this time either!"

Kristin shrugged and chewed on her lip as she thought for a second or two. "I hadn't thought out the details very well," she admitted. "Kind of an off-the-cuff suggestion. But how about we do best of three or best of five and pick something more interesting than money to bet?" A devilish little grin crossed her face for a moment as she dug around in her bag for a moment and then produced her new learners permit with a flourish. "If I win I reckon I get to drive home!" she exclaimed as she brandished the little plastic card with delight. "I've had a few lessons already and I actually haven't even crashed into anything or killed anyone. Your car will be perfectly safe, I promise!" "'Course if you're good enough to beat me you won't have to worry at all," she teased with another impish grin. "What would you bet against letting me drive?"

"You can punch me later." Kristin replied to Kat, then wheeled to face Elias as he headed for the door. "Elias, you get your butt back in here, now!" she demanded in a voice that carried an unmistakeable tone of steely determination which seemed rather at odds with the usually light-hearted personality of the Australian girl. "So you got off on the wrong foot," she spat as she looked back and forth between the pair. "Get over it!" She folded her arms across her chest as she fixed her gaze on Elias. "You can't hide from anything you think is a problem for the rest of your life," she pointed out. "You think I haven't noticed you avoiding me? Avoiding her? Hiding in the library or the Zen garden isn't a solution. You're not comfortable with people, I get that. One of the reasons you're at this school is to get better at it. With people comes conflict. You tried to help, in a way you did help, but in other ways you made the situation worse. It happens. Deal with it." "You," she continued in the same harsh tone as she turned on Kat. "Have glared daggers at him every time he's happened to be anywhere near you. Like you think it was his fault or something. News flash, it wasn't and he just tried to help you. You punched him in the face for it. Sure, it was a stressful situation, sure he invaded your privacy when that was the last thing you wanted. But those aren't reasons, they're excuses. If you think what you did was right or justified then maybe you ought to take a good hard look at yourself." Green light flickered faintly around the Australian teen as she stood between the pair, still ready to intercept any actual violence that might break out. "I'm not saying you have to be best of friends, I am saying that you both screwed up. So what are you both going to do about it?"

Kristin chatted on about telekinetic mechanics as the pair made the - thankfully short - walk to the gym. As they arrived she used a light mental pull to open the door, then grabbed hold of it to keep it open and ushered Elias inside. "Okay, I might have been planning something..." she admitted as the none-too-complicated plot became plainly obvious. "Hey Kat," she called out to the diminutive girl. "I brought another friend along too, I hope you don't mind. Figured you two might benefit from having a little chat after how your last meeting went." The Australian teen was actually pretty tense as she headed into the gym, ready to spring between the two if Kat reacted badly to Elias. It seemed unlikely, but they hadn't exactly gotten along so well last time..

Kristin chuckled a little. "I guess you did too," she said. "I was too busy trying to work out how to get your clothes to fit me to notice! Maybe I need someone else to explain the rules of dating too me then..." She was similarly amused by Jen's admission that her bowling exploits were not exactly as impressive as some of her other pursuits. "Okay okay," she replied. "I'm not exactly good enough to hand out a crushing defeat anyway, I think I scored about 113 last time. Not too impressive at all. Maybe we should see if they'll stick the bumper-things up for us, see if we can make it to 150!" She paused as another thought struck her. "Ooh better idea! We should make a bet on it! We both suck at bowling, it should be pretty close, how about we make it a proper challenge!?"

"Yeah, not her!" Glow yelled at the closest of the two thugs. With her telekinesis still tied up to maintain the wall that separated the Emporium from the rest of the mall she knew she would have a hard time of it if she tried to deal with Towers, but the Spidery heroine seemed to have that well in hand. While the bodyguards didn't seem too dangerous they needed to be dealt with, and Glow moved towards them to pull their attention away from her ally. "How about me?" she asked as she leapt up onto a nearby shelf full of baseball gloves, then pivoted and launched herself back down towards the first of the bodyguards. Mid flight she clenched her fist and delivered a solid punch to the jaw of her target. The man collapsed limply to the ground as Glow landed in a crouch, then glanced at her victim with a surprised "Huh!" While she hadn't expected to land such an effective blow she recovered quickly and straightened, her gaze fixed on the second of the bodyguards. "Giving up? Or do you want to try your luck next?" she challenged.

A small and amusing typo!

Kristin paused next to Indira and a faint green light shimmered above her head as she adjusted her telekinetic defenses to ward off the worst of the rain. Grim faced the young Australian regarded the mangled bodies for a long moment, then spoke quietly in reply to her friend's assessment. "Some of them might be monsters, but some of them are probably just normal men and women who happen to be the enemy just because they fight for the other side." she said sadly. "I guess there's no way to tell which ones are monsters in the heat of battle, and you sure as heck can't tell now. The warbots that did this must be pretty powerful. I hope they're all on our side." She turned to move inside towards where Sharl was. "Hopefully we can just get this over with and get out of here."

Kristin took Jennifer's hand and allowed the older woman to help her out of the car, then smoothed down the skirts of beautiful black dress that she had chosen for the evening. "I think I like them better when they're all the way down there," she decided as she looked out towards the throng of photographers. "Much less annoying that way." She followed Jennifer over to the doorman, although the bags prevented her from linking arms as she felt a proper date should. "And guest?" she asked in a quiet, teasing tone as they moved past the doorman together. "I don't get my name on the list? Is that in case I died during that torture that you called 'hair and makeup' and you needed to find a quick replacement?" In truth despite her protests she was quite pleased with the results - in the lovely dress, with professional-quality makeup and her short hair nicely she didn't look at all out of place. That didn't stop her from frowning slightly as her eyes swept across the other guests. As much as she looked the part she still felt completely out of place at an expensive party like this.

Kristin bounced to her feet and fell into step with Elias to walk out the door. "Did you want to drop those off first?" she asked as she eyed the armload of books Elias was carrying rather dubiously. "Actually, bring them along, they might come in handy. I figure the next step for you is to start using your telekinetic abilities to try lifting and moving objects, the books will be great for that. Next step for me, well I've been trying to expand my ability to feel things around me with my telekinesis. I'm hoping you might be able to help out with that." The young Australian give Elias a grin. She could tell that he was suspicious, but she hadn't felt any attempts to read her thoughts and she was pleased that he hadn't done so. "I didn't really have any specific plans for how to go about it. I figured we could just make it up as we go" she said in her best innocent tone.