Electra
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Stesha's eyes widened a little when Moira reached out to touch her hair, but it didn't really look like her host was angling for a fight right now. The daisies were definitely real, petals soft and slightly cool under Moira's fingers. "The flowers are real," Stesha confirmed a moment later, "and the hair color is natural" she added, not entirely sure which was meant. She followed her erstwhile host into the kitchen, interested in the monsters and very torn about the cheesecake. Was it superheroic to eat cheesecake in a stranger's house? Would it be rude to say no? And what if it looked like really good cheesecake? In the end, she just sat down at the table. "And if I beautify the city at night," she said, responding belatedly to the comment from earlier, "then everyone wakes up to a nice surprise."
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Wander startled badly at the touch, bringing her hands up to defend herself, but managed to catch herself before lashing out at what had hit her. Biting her lower lip between her teeth, she refocused and kept hitting the now-moving targets. As her tension ratcheted back up, she started hitting harder again, not with superhuman strength, but definitely more than just tapping. She also started using her left hand to punch as well, but only when the target came close in range. She didn't say a word or meet her teacher's eyes, concentrating both on the exercise at hand and on waiting to block another hit, if any when it came.
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"I can do it," Erin muttered under her breath, sounding slightly affronted that she'd be accused of whining. She decided to stick with punches, since she'd been practicing with those. Even more gingerly than before, she punched out at the mitt, still exclusively right-handed, till she was tapping the left mitt about twice a second. Her focus on the mitt was total, and if someone had come up behind and startled her at that moment, she'd likely have taken their head off. After a little while, though, the sheer repetitiveness of the task became almost meditative, and she started to relax just a little bit. This time, it didn't result in a punch that was much too hard, a result that seemed like good progress.
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Stesha turned from the mirror to face her host. "S... I mean, I'm Fleur de Joie," she said with a bit of false bravado, remembering that she was a superhero right now. Maybe it hadn't turned out quite the way she thought it would, but that didn't change her need for a secret identity. "And I really wasn't intending to steal anything. I'm beautifying the city, and this neighborhood happened to be first on my list. What sorts of monsters were you fighting?" she asked with renewed curiosity.
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Erin rolls craft electronics, but she dunno.
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Erin shrugged a little, looking at the others. "It'd be nice to get some actual strength-training equipment for people who are like us," she admits. "I mean, it can't all be fighting machines down in the basement, we want to learn to do other stuff too, right? And none of the gym equipment would begin to help. We could just, you know, pick the machines up and walk around with them and not get any exercise." She looks to the coach. "It's just testing equipment, right? Not any fighting or weird stuff like that?"
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"How is this supposed to help us cope?" Erin demanded, her cheeks reddening. "I can't even participate in team sports, and you want me to do this? I'm sorry, Doctor, but you're just... you're just totally wrong. I'm not stupid because I'm strong, and they're not invulnerable because they have superpowers, and this hasn't got a goddamned thing to do with... with anything! It's just a stupid game to make us play because you can't fix what went wrong in our worlds." She stood up and grabbed her notebook, heading for the door.
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Erin gave the psychologist a flatly disbelieving look. "I don't want to do that," she told him. "Somebody's going to get hurt. Why would you make Sam and I be everybody's enemy, and us have to try and do something that, if we succeed, could easily send someone to the hospital? I thought we were supposed to be learning to use our powers responsibly."
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A little bit cheered by the pep talk, Wander turned back to the dummy and began punching again, this time more circumspectly. She was starting to get the hang of it now, punches that ended in light taps on the chin, rather than whiffs or punishing blows. The dummy still rocked a bit, but less than in the first set. After her fifty punches, she turned to Thunderstanding, rubbing her knuckles lightly. "But what about in a fight?" she asked. "Even if I can be careful here, I don't know what will happen when, you know, the adrenaline starts pumping. Sometimes it's like I don't even think, I just move."
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Erin unfolded herself gracefully to her feet, setting aside her book for the moment. She sized up the strange girl for a moment, then offered a wisp of a polite smile. "I'm Erin," she said, then turned to the coach. "What do you want us to do?" she asked him. "I thought we weren't allowed to use our powers in the gym complex?"
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This is just a note to say that Avenger and I are going to be leaving Thursday night for a marvelous cross-country trip lasting until the 21st. We will not be incommunicado, but you can expect to see substantially less of us during that time.
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Stesha climbed out of the shiny black car and walked to the door, taking out her keys and letting herself into the building. She waited until she was safely inside before letting out a long sigh and dislodging some of the pins and flowers from her hair. Well, he hadn't asked to come up, and he hadn't walked her to the door for a goodnight kiss. After everything else, that seemed like a pretty clear indication. She could nurse the tiny hope that she was wrong, but mostly she suspected that her first instincts had been her best ones. Jack, especially Superhero Jack, was so far out of her league that even going for a tryout had been ridiculous. But he had, she admitted with another sigh as she flipped on the lights and kicked off her sandals, he had definitely been an excellent kisser.
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Wander stood in front of the dummy and took a few deep breaths. She gave it a few slow, slow, punches, not even touching the nose, then tried to do what Thunderstanding had just done. Unfortunately, she was off by about an inch and a half. There was a deafening *KRONG* noise as the dummy ratcheted backwards, then upright again, vibrating. It had a rather large dent where its nose was supposed to be. Horrified, Wander stared at it for a moment before rounding her shoulders and turning to face her teacher. "I thought I had it that time."
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Well, I did a 4 dice roll to see whether Erin would accidentally connect with the dummy or not. She did great on the third three, but the first one, she rolled a one. Oops. =)
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Wander relaxed as the moment of tension faded and it became clear that the fight wasn't going to continue. She listened carefully to the instructions, then approached the dummy. Standing at arm's length, she reached out with a fist and batted it lightly in the nose, a gesture that barely set it rocking, then pulled back the same arm and did it again at about the same intensity. With a look to make sure she had understood the instructions, she continued touching the dummy, slow touches that became gradually faster as she counted under her breath. As she got faster, the knocks got harder, for all she still didn't seem to be expending any effort, till the metal dummy was rocking back and forth with each hit.
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"I can't take full credit for that," she said with a slightly embarrassed laugh. "I thought they were just kids, right up until they started shooting. And I couldn't just leave you in the lurch after I dragged you in there, not when I didn't realize that you had powers too. I was already trying to figure out how to get us the hell out of there when you did your jedi mind trick thing." She gave him directions to her house, not a very difficult drive to a nice, if crowded neighborhood and a small apartment building. "Well, here it is," she said, hesitating as he pulled up in front. "I really had a nice time tonight, even with everything that went wrong."
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Yeah, me too. =) I have to keep reminding myself to check both threads!
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She gave him a look for that suggestion. "I already have a name picked out," she told him, "I just really haven't had much chance to use it yet. But I will, soon. Why else would people come to Freedom City, if not to make the world a better place?" she asked, echoing their earlier conversation. "Maybe we can even work together again sometime, if things work out that way." She didn't want to presume too much, after the weirdness during the movie and her earlier doubts, but it was a nice thought. "At least we'll be working together this weekend. I'm looking forward to dyeing those flowers, it's always an interesting challenge."
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She laughed as they walked to the car. "I hope not," she said fervently. "At least, not until I get some kind of mask. My parents would die of shock, and then they'd kill me. Four years of college and I'm going into hero work? I wouldn't hear the end of it. What about you?" she asked, trying to keep the conversation normal and nice as they both got in and buckled up.
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"I'm sorry," Wander said quickly, looking worried even as she automatically brought her fists up into a defensive posture at the look in Thunderstanding's eye. "Was that wrong?"
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"It's been a memorable night," she agreed, looking up at the stars with him. "I just wish I didn't have to be at work first thing tomorrow, but flowers wait for no woman." She gave him a little smile, testing the waters. "Maybe we can do this again sometime. I'd like a chance to actually see the museum with you, without having to tear the place up and then take off."
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Stesha crossed her legs and smoothed her skirt down over them, then folded her hands in her lap and watched the movie. Every now and then she glanced sidelong at Jack, but couldn't figure out what on earth had actually happened. Maybe she just had bad tasting skin. She'd never really thought to check, even if she could lick her own neck. The bizarre mental picture that conjured was enough to cheer her up a little bit, and the movie at least started getting kind of interesting when all the bees took off to find a new hive and started swarming through the middle of a little village. It still wasn't enthralling or anything, but she'd seen more boring documentaries. It was enough to give her an excuse to keep her eyes mostly on the screen.
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Stesha startled when he jerked away, her hand automatically going to her own neck as she looked at him. "Is something wrong?" she whispered uncertainly, trying to remember if she'd gotten some chemicals on herself during the day, or put on bug repellant, or anything nasty like that. For the life of her, she couldn't think of anything. But it wasn't hard to tell, even past the stirrings of a vague headache, that something had repulsed him. "I might have gotten some algoflash splashed on myself earlier, but it's not poisonous or anything," she tried to assure him.
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The attack seemed to shake Wander out of the moment of uncertainty. As soon as Thunderstanding landed, Erin was in motion. Without any sort of finesse whatsoever, she closed the distance between them in a heatbeat and delivered a two-fisted punch straight into her new teacher's midsection, then backed off just as quickly.
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Wander connects with a basic punching attack.