What Makes Him Sing (IC)

[Electra]

Miss A laughed, an infectious, merry sound as they walked along a secluded corridor between laboratories. "Have you noticed how many female superheroes work here?" she asked him. "We have produced some of the finest anti-wedge technology the world has ever known. And don't worry about the technician being discreet, all our techs are investigated thoroughly and sign comprehensive non-disclosure agreements when they're hired. All your secrets are quite safe."

She led him into a large empty room, longer than wide, with one long wall covered in reflective impervium-fused glass and the far wall dotted with various targets. The other long wall was colored in black and white stripes, while the floor contained distance markings and a thick red line marking off the near quarter of the room. "This room is highly reinforced," she explained, "nothing you do should be able to damage it unless you were to concentrate on doing so and spend some time on it. I'm going to leave the room and go back to the observation booth," she gestured to the glass wall," and let you do your testing in here. You'll stand behind the red line and I'll explain to you what I'd like to see from you. You need to let me know if anything makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe. All right?"

[KnightDisciple]

"I didn't mean to imply anything bad about your workers. I guess I'm just nervous still. The fact that you haven't taken my name helps. A lot."

He smirked.

"I suppose superhero women would have plenty of motivation to develop anti-wedgie technology. We men thank you for it."

He glanced around as he was led to the room, taking in the sites. Once there, he patiently listened as Miss A explained how things would work.

"Sounds like a plan. I'll go ahead and loosen up a bit, in case you have me fire on the go."

Without waiting for an answer, Gabriel went through a series of quick, simple stretches, focusing on loosening his arms, shoulders, and upper torso, but spending at least a short amount of time stretching every major group.

[Electra]

While he stretched out, Miss A went into the booth, invisible to Gabriel, but still clearly audible over a speaker system. "All right, whenever you're ready, I'd like you to destroy the target I'm sending out now. Use whatever power you like, and your usual technique." As she spoke, a door in the far wall opened up, and a transparent ballistic dummy rolled out on treads, stopping about thirty feet away from where Gabriel stood. "Whenever you're ready." In the booth, Miss A sat in a chair with her pad in hand, totally unmoving and apparently mesmerized by the performance. There was, for the moment, no technician, yet somehow everything was being activated just as it should.

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel waited patiently for Miss A to finish her instructions, and for the dummy to halt at the appointed location. He studied it for a few moments, before giving a confident nod of his head. He looked towards the glass wall for a moment, a smirk on his face.

"Hope you have more than one dummy."

With that, he held his left arm up, pointing his flattened palm directly at the dummy. There was a barely-detectable hum in the air, and if Miss A's eyes (or the rooms cameras) were sharp enough, they might see the line of distorted air going from his hand to the dummy. Strangely, it didn't seem to be affecting the target, at least not at first. But then she might notice the cracks spreading across its surface.

Suddenly, Gabriel whipped his left arm down, shifted his stance, and brought his right arm up in a similar pose. The sound was more noticeable, a loud, deep thunder that raced across the room; the air distorted more noticeably.

At that point, the dummy was blown into several large pieces. Gabriel turned and gave the booth a thumbs-up.

"There you go my star-spangled friend! One demonstration, served up fresh. Though, we'll need another for me to finish showing my tricks."

[Electra]

"Don't worry, we have plenty," Miss Americana told him, her voice sounding amused over the speakers. "Your body is producing ultrafrequency soundwaves in a focused distribution not dissimilar from a parabolic amplifier. The focused waves are spread over the frequency spectrum, which allows for the broad range of your power. This time I'm not going to introduce a target for you, I'm going to ask you instead to use your less-destructive abilities. Sing something, the way you would to incite emotion in a person or a group of people."

[KnightDisciple]

"I'll work through the arsenal and finish up with that little trick, I think. It's a real crowd-pleaser. Let's see, what to start with...Ah, that's a good one."

He turns and faces the wall where the dummy had been concentrating for a moment, clearly gathering energy about himself, before firing it at the wall.

"That will stop a grown man cold, even one that's way bigger than normal. I can do it a bit quicker, but I have to get up close and personal to do so. Kind of like this."

He walks up to the same wall and slaps his hand against it, channeling more sonic energy into it.

"That one will ruin someone's day for sure. Now, for one you've heard before."

He actually floats to one side of the room, next to the glass, and points to the other side. Suddenly, a loud sound like a gong being struck and a trumpet going off rips through the air, fading after a few moments.

"Follow up with this."

He points at a bare section of wall, and something changes in his voice as more subtle energies flow outwards.

"That one almost always knocks them for a loop."

He turns to give the booth a winning smile before striding to the middle of the room.

"As for a song, hm. Ah, here we go..."

Suddenly, his voice rings out clear and true, and Miss A's instruments should easily pick up the undercurrents. Miss A herself may get caught up in the emotion being generated...

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed!"

He continued to sing, his song striving to inspire hope in any who could hear.

[Electra]

Miss A had to scramble to keep up with the sudden change of plans, and for a moment the lights in the room flickered as Gabriel began showing off all his powers in quick succession. It only lasted a moment, though, before things returned to normal and the testing could proceed apace. It was a lot of data to try and take in at once though, and even interfaced with the computer and with her superlative intellect, it was all Miss A could do to capture the various sounds that he was making and the underlying physiological data. She was busy enough with that work that she barely caught what she'd wanted to hear in the first place, the singing!

"All right," she said when he was done, sounding just a bit frazzled. "That was very impressive, now you're going to have to give me a few minutes to sort through all the data. Go ahead and relax."

[KnightDisciple]

"I guess that was a lot of stuff, wasn't it? Um. Sorry about that. I figured the two of you would do okay up there, but I suppose I could have slowed down some."

He rocks back and forth on his heels for a bit, before shrugging and assuming a rough lotus position in midair. He closed his eyes, put his hands on his knees, and started to sing. He was clearly doing it mostly for the chance to just do something, but his volume was enough Miss A could hear and enjoy, without unduly distracting her.

"A mighty Fortress is our God,

A Bulwark never failing;

Our Helper He amid the flood

Of mortal ills prevailing:

For still our ancient foe

Doth seek to work us woe;

His craft and power are great,

And, armed with cruel hate,

On earth is not his equal."

He continued on with the hymn, singly slowly, gently even. He seemed to lose himself in the words as he went.

[Electra]

While Gabriel amused himself, Gina worked feverishly to get the data into some kind of coherent order and begin drawing conclusions from it. Luckily, it was all very obvious to her, so the sort of correlation that might have taken days for a lesser researcher took only a few minutes, and by the time he was done with the song she was trying very hard not to be distracted by, she had a decent set of datapoints plotted and a strong working hypothesis.

She rolled out another dummy from the far wall, but this time also opened a compartment in the long glass wall. Mavis trundled out, holding something that looked a bit like a fur muff from a Victorian outdoor costume, if it were made out of smooth white metal. The robot rolled up behind him and held up the device."All right, this time I'd like to try something a little different," Miss A told him. "I'd like you to put your hands behind you and insert them in the inhibitor. Then I want you to try and shoot the dummy anyway."

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel stood back to his feet as the robot rolled out, tilting his head a bit to one side in curiosity. He seemed slightly hesitant to do as she asked, but after a moment, he moved his hands behind his back and allowed the automaton to "cuff" him.

"So...Hm."

It was clear the idea had never occurred to him, but he wasn't dismissing it out of hand. He closed his eyes for a moment, as if searching within himself. They opened slowly, and he took a few steps forward...

And yelled at the dummy.

This time, he skipped weakening it to head directly to blasting it; the attack took longer, but it finally blew the head of the dummy off.

Gabriel himself took a few deep breaths, shook his head, and smiled at the glass.

"Wasn't sure if that would work at first. Hurts just a bit, but mostly because I'm screaming. I might have to work on that, see if I have to yell to achieve the effect."

He tried to turn his head around to look at his locked-away hands, without much success. He gave a sheepish glance to the booth.

"Um...can I take these off now?"

[Electra]

"Soon," Miss A assured him over the loudspeakers. "I think we're onto something here." The blasted dummy wheeled back behind the wall, and was replaced by yet another fresh one. The Mavis robot wheeled away as well, back into her alcove in the opposite wall. "Now I want you to blast the dummy, but don't use your voice, either. No hands, no voice. Be creative," she encouraged, a faint thread of amusement in the faceless voice issuing from the speaker. "You never know what situations you might run into in the field."

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel gave the window an exaggerated frown at the new instructions. His voice had a clear tone of joking when he spoke.

"Typical woman. Always making up new rules. No hands and no voice, hm? Hrm, I suppose I...no. No, that's probably a bad idea in spandex and with a lady present."

Best not to ask.

"Gotta think outside the box...Let's give this one a go."

With that, he carefully floated into the air, before bringing his legs up perpendicular to the rest of his body. There was no real strain in the movement, but he was clearly concentrating very hard, with a couple of beads of sweat running down his face.

With what seemed to be great effort, he finally let loose a blast of sound from his feet. It struck the dummy, causing multiple cracks but not breaking it.

It also sent Gabriel into the wall behind him with no small amount of force. He gave a grunt of pain and almost dropped all the way to the ground, before finally lowering himself into a sitting position. The sensors bore out the truth of his next words.

"Ow. Okay, don't think anything's broken, nothing really hurt besides my pride and a few bruises. Let's file that one away as "last, desperate measure". I think some of my other tricks might work a bit better through the foot, but I want to rest a moment first."

[Electra]

"Of course," Miss A agreed over the speaker, concern and amusement at equal levels in her voice. "Would you like a medic to look you over, or are you too much of a manly man for that?" The dummy retreated back behind the wall, even as Mavis rolled over on its sturdy treads, offering a robotic pincer arm to help Gabriel to his feet. "Now is that recoil something you feel whenever you use your blast power but usually absorb with your body, or is that something new you haven't experienced in previous uses?"

[KnightDisciple]

"I'm most definitely enough of a manly man to know I'm fine. I've had worse on patrol nights, and not only did I not need a medic, I even tucked myself into bed."

He doesn't refuse the robot's help, though; having your hands locked behind your back made things a touch harder generally speaking. Once he had stood and shook some of the soreness out, he let himself ponder her question.

"I'd say it's a bit of both. Never felt that much recoil before; that felt less natural, if that makes sense. I'm not sure I could shoot a bolt like that from my belly-button, either. But some of it is me being able to brace myself against any recoil; it's subconscious, but my legs really help, whether I'm airborne or on the ground. If my hands had been free, I think I could have avoided the crash. Still, was interesting figuring out I could do that."

There was an awkward pause, and he cleared his throat.

"Um...by chance, can I have my hands back soon?"

[Electra]

"Yes, I think we've established what I was hoping to from those tests." Mavis pressed a button and the device on Gabriel's hands was released, freeing him from his ignominious confinement. "Now are there any specific questions you have about your powers?" Miss A asked, "or things you would like to test out in a controlled and monitored environment? This is a very secure area, you can attempt things here that would be unsafe in most other places, even other laboratories."

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel rolled his arms around a couple of times, loosening them up a bit. He absently rubbed his wrists, less from pain and more as a way to reassure himself they were no long bound. He frowned a bit as he thought things over.

"I feel like our tests gave me a pretty good idea of my day-to-day limits; barring a stressful situation, I'm not sure I would be cranking it up much higher. The only other trick I have is my ventriloquism, and that's pretty easy to document. I have a feeling I could talk to a lot of people with it, but being in a sound-sealed room means that's hard to replicate.

So I think I'd just like to talk over my powers and such. Get a better idea of how I'm doing what I do. If you get too in-depth, I'll let you know I'm getting a bit lost."

[Electra]

"All right then, I think we've done enough tests for one day, in that case." A few moments later, Miss Americana walked out of the observation booth and escorted him back to the lab where they'd started. "Even better news," she said with a smile,"I'll even let you get dressed before we start the discussion." By the time Gabriel was finished dressing, Miss A had cleared off part of a lab table with two stools next to it, and brought up some test results on screen. "Have a seat," she invited. "Would you like something to drink?"

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel's grin at the news he could get back into normal clothes (such as they were) almost split his head in two.

"May the blessings of Saint Isidore of Seville be upon you for letting me get back into normal pants. These things are so tight! It almost feels like I'm wearing practically nothing!"

His tone was playfully exasperated as he all but ran to the room where his clothing was stored. The final few feet, he all but skipped in, and it wasn't long before he emerged, visibly relaxed, an easygoing smile on his face as he came to a rest on the stool provided for him.

"Hm. I'd say coffee normally, but it's Lent, so...Glass of ice water?"

[Electra]

That got him a sympathetic face from Miss A. "Ouch, giving till it hurts, and we're only what, three, four days into the season? I can do a bottle of water for you, no problem" She pulled two bottles of spring water from a minifridge under a lab bench and gave him one before cracking the other for herself and taking a sip. "All right, I'm going to lay out the test results for you, and you can stop me whenever you have a question or want me to explain anything in more depth. Don't feel bad, I tend to let my lectures run away with me sometimes." She spent a few minutes laying out the results of the physical scans and tests, pointing to various clips from the high-speed cameras, and showing footage from the resonance imaging scanners.

"To boil it down as simply as possible, the noise you make with your voice is only the most obvious manifestation of the noise you can make," she told him after the show and tell session. "There are sonic-resonance producing nodules scattered all over your body, producing ultra-high and low frequency sound to produce the effects you are capable of. As we saw in the manacles test, the nodules are optimized for certain tasks and frequencies, each with a vocal range, you might call it, that is specific and tailored."

[KnightDisciple]

"Thanks for the sympathy. And the whole idea is that it's something we'll notice not having. I gave up coffee, alcohol, and chocolate. Let's just say I'm praying a bit more than I have for a while."

He gave her a lopsided grin as he took the bottle of water and sat down. As she explained her findings, he nodded, his face thoughtful. He seemed to grasp at least the general principle of everything, if not the minute details.

At the mention of the nodules in his body, he glanced at his hands, his expression wry.

"Huh. Wondered why it tingled when I first started using my powers. Guess my body got used to it. Hm. So it's all biological?"

He leans back, a thoughtful expression on his face.

"Maybe it's so I've got a "trump card" when fighting the forces of Darkness? I mean, I'm fairly likely to fight demons and evil wizards and such. But I've got not a trace of magic in me, not really. So while they're probably prepared for an angel or a good mage or whatnot to show up...I'd probably pass under the radar, as it were. And if they tried canceling out my powers, I might have a chance of it not working. It's actually very clever, when you think about it.

Plus, it explains why some ways of doing things feel so natural. Going outside my vocal range is uncomfortable."

[Electra]

"Superbiological, and definitely within the metahuman range, but definitely organic and explainable," Miss A confirmed with a slight smile. "I can look at you using your powers and see how they work, and how your body functions in such a way as to make them work. I can measure the effects without a problem. As to why you have the powers, whether they are a gift from God and what His purpose might have been in assigning them to you..." She chuckled and spread her hands. "That's not a question for the scientists, I'm afraid. But it sounds like you have a handle on it already."

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel gave a happy shrug.

"I was mostly thinking out loud with that part. It's mostly speculation and guesses, but it seems sound. I didn't expect you to give me a final answer, though I certainly welcome opinions. Your work here has been more than helpful."

He gave her a winning smile.

"Reminds me of a saying I've found particularly applicable to my life: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more." Some might see that as a burden, but me? I see it as a challenge."

He gestured at the lab around them.

"I can't invent things or cure diseases or whatnot, but I can help people. I figure it all balances out, you know? Anyways. Did you need anything else from me today? Certainly if you need anything in the future, let me know. If it's within my ability to help, I will do everything I can for you and your friends, if any of you ever need anything."

[Electra]

Miss A was silent for just a moment, studying Gabriel in a way that even with his excellent people skills, he couldn't quite comprehend. It almost seemed like she had something in mind, then dismissed it. "I appreciate the offer," she told him instead, smiling affably. "I'm glad I was able to give you some food for thought. The data I've collected, properly anonymized of course, will be very valuable in my continuing research into mechanical applications of superpowers. And I may call in that favor one day," she added with a quick wink.

[KnightDisciple]

"Well then, at the very least, I've educated myself, and helped advance the cause of science! An afternoon well spent, if I do say so myself."

He'd noted the odd look, but was too polite to say anything about it.

"What do you mean by "the mechanical applications of superpowers"? Do you mean giving people superpowers through devices and technology, or-"

He stopped and shook his head with a chuckle.

"Sorry. May not be a scientist, but I'm still one for curiosity. Tell you what. I imagine you spend most of your time cooped up in this Lab, or off fighting super-villains, or otherwise doing really important things that help people. Do you often get the chance to sit back and relax? Do you want to catch some coffee sometime and swap stories? Take a break from work, be it scientific or super-heroic, for just a bit?"

[Electra]

Miss A looked a little surprised for just a moment, then she smiled. "I'd like that," she told him. "I imagine neither of us gets a chance to sit back anywhere outside of our commitments very often. It would be nice to relax with a little coffee and conversation. Why don't I give you a call next time I get some time free in my schedule and we'll set something up?" It was all said in the most casual of ways, of course, colleagues meeting for a nonalcoholic drink. "And maybe I'll satisfy your curiosity about my work as well."