Derin

"Kristin is correct," Chloe added. "While I would have no problem repairing her brain tissue, I cannot replace the chemical changes born of experience. Were you to use a gravity weapon to destroy any part of her brain I could not guarantee a full recovery, or even necessarily guarantee survival, depending on the damage." Chloe stopped, and had the urge to hit herself. They'd just clarified that speaking about healing fatal or near-fatal injuries was a social misstep. Barely a minute ago, she'd been corrected after talking specifically about healing brain damage in her own body, and she'd gone and committed the exact same faux pas. She should have responded to Kristin's doubts privately, or at least when Subito wasn't listening, But Kristin had voiced the question publically, and confused her. Social interaction was difficult. "Yes... tell us about these chocolates, please." Chocolate was a safe topic. Nobody could be upset by chocolate.

"Yes," Chloe said. "I will agree to that." Pasta should be very simple to cook, and while she didn't entirely understand what "extras" encompassed she felt that Kristin would very quickly get an idea of her cooking capabilities. She carefully selected sandwiches for her tray and cast an eye over the cafeteria. Television had told her that choosing a place to sit was a question of complex social dynamics, but television hadn't proven a reliable source of information on many topics so far. She glanced uncertainly at Kristin. Kristin would know where to sit.

Will save (1d20+7=13) Whiplash is currently using sound to see instead of light, does the illusion still affect her?

Chloe hadn't heard of Derrick Dash outside of studying the flier, but she nodded as if she understood. Most of the time, she was learning, people didn't ask follow-up questions, and it seemed forgivable to sacrifice some level of accuracy for conversational flow. She remained silent, making a half-hearted attempt to deduce what was happening onscreen, until she was addressed again. (She'd been confused about mixing social interaction with visual/auditory entertainment at first -- surely each would detract from the other -- but she was beginning to see how the entertainment provided a ready emergency source of distraction and conversation material.) "My apologies," she said to Subito, "It was not all that long ago, and I still have trouble explaining it. I didn't mean to shock you."

With fire raining down around them, staying behind the huge fire-controlling ally sounded like a good idea. It occurred to her that she could see everything but the fire, and he could probably sense the fire and very little else. If they were going to make a habit of this sort of thing either he'd need sonar goggles or she'd need a fireproof costume. Whiplash flicked her weapon out to tangle the wings of one of their opponents. If she could pull them out of the sky they could simply beat them into submission. Then she took Pyre's advice and stepped behind him. If the demon came down, she'd tell him where it landed; if not, well, she'd have to try again.

Attempting to trip one of the demons and bring them down. Attack: 1d20+12=19 Trip: (1d20+12=23) Using echolocation goggles to prevent issues with concealment, of course.

"I have no problem eating meat," she replied. "Cooking it just feels... strange." Besides, it was difficult to nutritionally balance a vegetarian diet, especially when she had sampled so few foods since the accident. She wasn't quite certain whether she had normal nutritional requirements any more but it was best not to take chances. That was probably unnecessary detail to explain to Kristin, though. Instead she headed over to wait patiently in line. "I do like pasta. The flavours are simple. It is not as nutritious as egg though."

Cast obscure visual from Whiplash's utility belt and drew a weapon as a move action. No need to climb, my whip has a 25 foot range. Can you "trip" someone who's flying to bring them down? Or are these guys levitating?

Whiplash didn't hesitate. Since she'd come to Freedom City she'd helped a giant bee and been rescued by somebody who looked like a demon, but even she wasn't going to run toward these new apparitions with sunshine and smiles. "You can do fire at a distance blind, right?" she asked Pyre. Without waiting for an answer, she pulled her echolocation goggles down and dropped a smoke grenade at her own feet, engulfing them in a 50-foot radius cloud of black smoke. She drew her whip. The tricky part, she decided, would be avoiding any fire that Pyre or the newcomers might throw around; her echolocation goggles let her see through the vision-obscuring fog, but they wouldn't show flames.

Sweet. How high up are the demons?

What kind of action is Whiplash pulling down her echolocation goggles? Move action?

"I don't know how to cook," Chloe replied. "I'm given to understand it is a useful skill to develop, but I've always found it disconcerting. Cooking meat especially. It smells and feels exactly like a burn victim that needs treatment; I always get the odd feeling that I should be healing the flesh I'm cooking." Almost subconsciously, she ran her hand up and down her left arm, where the nanites remembered repairing extensive burns after the accident. "I haven't have very much practice though. Egg sandwiches are one of the few things I can make and enjoy. Or plain toast, I tend to eat a lot of that. What sort of things do you cook?"

Chloe might not know much about casual socialising, but she had a lot of memories about reading and calming distressed patients. She felt Subito's reaction, although she wasn't sure what she'd done wrong until Kristin spoke up. "I understand," she whispered back. "Thank you." Humans were very afraid of death. She just didn't realise that they were so afraid of it that they'd react so negatively even when it temporarily affected somebody they hadn't known at the time. And yet they were fine with the violence onstage in front of them. Unless the talking was to distract them from the performance? Was the whole thing some sort of... game of emotional Chicken? That puzzle could wait. For now, she noted Kristin's advice and incorporated it into her standard explanation. It seemed that a lot of things upset people; too many more concessions and she'd begin to sacrifice accuracy. But the conversation had moved on. "What do you do, Luke?" Chloe asked once Kristin had finished talking to him.

"It may be difficult if there are crowds to navigate around. My memory is good but I'm not used to working in so much space." She checked the map and headed out, keeping it open in her hand this time. "Is the food here good?" Food was one thing that Chloe enjoyed experimenting with, provided she steered clear of particularly overwhelming flavours. She may not have memories, but the sensory processing parts of her brain were largely intact, and it was... fun to rediscover the foods she had acquired a taste for over her life. Or at least the girl who... she pushed the thought aside. She was here to learn, not have an identity crisis. "Do they have egg sandwiches?"

Whiplahs's initiative = 16. Initiative (1d20+8=16)

Chloe raised a brow. "I don't see how useful dancing would be to me. There are more efficient ways to maintain coordination and flexibility." She paused to watch a pair wrestling. "Now that looks useful. A medic needs to be able to hold a patient immobile, and while my strength allows me to do that without trouble for an injured patient, I daresay a healthy and uncooperative one would demonstrate rather more difficulty." There was something nagging in her stomach. Anxhiety? Hunger. She pulled out the map again. "Are we anywhere near a cafeteria?"

Chloe couldn't tell whether or not Kristin was joking, but offering healing services to sparring students was beginning to sound like a good idea to her. The most obvious risk to watch out for was the possibility that student would become less cautious and hurt each other more if they could be easily healed, but she assumed that the school would have fairly good healers on staff so her presence should hardly make that worse. "I am told that I used to dance, but... I don't remember how. A lot of my muscle memory survived, so I could probably relearn fairly quickly if I were so inclined, but there seems little point. I've not done much in the way of sports."

"I wasn't navigating, really," Chloe exp[lained. "I memorised the route in advance. Had I made a mistake it would have been very difficult to find the route again without consulting the map." She glanced over the weapons. "I have considered training in some sort of staff or sword combat as a purely defensive measure in case I am attacked, but I think you are right; carrying a weapon I am not prepared to use to its fullest potential would more likely be a danger to myself and everybody else involved." She dismissed football and basketball our of hand; although they weren't designed to injure people, they were still too contact-heavy for her. Wrestling might be worth a try, however. She eyed some of the people training. "If nothing else, I'm sure this place would provide ample opportunity to practice healing. Do you play any sports or train in any fighting arts?"

"I see." The doctor had been right. A place for misfits of all kinds indeed. She made her way to the gymnasium, breaking her memorised route only to navigate around small crowds of people. Chloe had never been in a gym that she could remember, although she'd seen them on television. She wasn't sure how much benefit she'd get from exercise, since so much of her strength came from unnatural nanite adjustments anyway. "I suppose it's good for the school to include a gym, given the physical nature of the students' chosen careers."

Chloe nodded. "I made certain that all necessary paperwork was completed. It is the rest of the campus that I haven't seen." She frowned at the map for a moment before latching onto Kristin's recommendation. "The Gym, then." She traced the route with her finger, memorising the directions and distances, folded the map away, and strode confidently out of the dorm. "I admit I'm a little worried about cultural clashes here. Most of my knowledge of social protocol comes from textbooks and television, outside of dealing with patients of course. Do you have any advice?"

"Alright." Chloe paused to take a pill from the bottle on the dresser before digging out the map. It may not be complicated, but the campus was certainly big. The system of underground levels reminded her of home, though. Maybe it wouldn't be too difficult to figure out. "Where should we go first?" There was something about Glow that she couldn't quite place. Familiar but... "Your accent. You're Australian, aren't you?" She grinned. "So am I. Born in Tasmania. I suppose people with powers would probably gravitate here from all over the world, wouldn't they? Where are you from?"

"Thank you." Chloe carefully selected a single malteser from the packet and passed it along. She'd tried chocolate once before, as an experiment, and found the experience to be overwhelming and confusing. Taste and pleasure were still things that she was trying to figure out. This time, though, she knew what to expect, so she braced herself, crushed the treat between her molars few times and swallowed quickly. "I do not recall my old school," Chloe said. "I dropped out immediately after the car accident that killed me, to recover. Amnesia was one of the permanent effects of that accident. I have met some of my old friends, though, and they seemed like nice people. I was healed by my parents' nanite medical chamber, which is now permanently integrated into my system. My psychologist recommended training here to most effectivey operate as a healer. He told my parents that I needed distance from my old life, and proper guidance to recover." Was that the right amount of information? Too much? Too little? She glanced at Luke. She still knew almost nothing about him or Serge.

"I see." A giant, firebreathing bee. Okay then. Chloe wasn't used to dealing with nonhuman sentients. They raised uncomfortable ethical questions. Were they also patients? Where was the line drawn? Did her programming forbid her from hurting them? She supposed she'd find out. Probably at the worst possible time. "And Super-Bee is also a hero?" If nothing else, the school was probably a brilliant place for future heroes to network. And future villains to learn all about their future adversaries under the guise of hero training. "I should have a map somewhere here in these orientation documents," she said, digging through the paperwork she'd been given. "It looks simple enough on the map, but I'm not used to navigating in real space."

"Thank you. A giant bee?" Chloe had been assured that she wouldn't be even close to the strangest thing at Claremont Academy. She'd had her doubts, but it seemed that the doctor had been correct. Giant bees... even the oddly friendly telekinetic who seemed disconcertingly happy about the prospect of fighting probably rivalled her in strangeness. She shrugged (a gesture that had taken a lot of practice to get right) and quickly moved her few neatly folded outfits and small bag of toiletries into the dresser. Having run out of tasks, she sat stiffly on the end of her bed. "I have some trouble with new places," she admitted. "I am not yet used to leaving my house... or even my room, for that matter. I assume your sense of direction is better."

"Not really," Chloe said. "They're medical nanites. They do medicine. I could attempt to demonstrate their possible use in combat if you would agree to spar with me, but they are neither efficient to use in combat nor aggressive." Combat was one of the things that Chloe was going to have to learn to deal with, she had decided. Much as she would attempt to avoid it, it would not always be possible. "I tend to prefer to avoid combat. I'm experienced at calming agitated people and people in pain; that comes with being a healer. But there will always be patients... opponents, I mean... who can't be reasoned with."