Now what did you learn? (IC)

[Geez3r]

Dynamo had been trying to dig up the courage to do this for a few hours now. He had the flowers, he had the apology rehearsed a thousand times. All he had to do was give her the flowers, give his apology, get her response, and walk away. Dynamo knew she wasn't going to like him after this, that'd be far too much of a stretch. Hating him a little less was the goal here. If everything went even better than according to plan, they'd be restored to a blank slate, and then Eli would do the smartest thing in his life, walk away. He wasn't ready to deal with what happened to Erin, irregardless if she was ready to talk.

Finally, Eli mustered up the courage to walk into the gym. He felt really out of place without his uniform and carrying a bouquette of flowers, but it was a price he could not complain about. "Uh Erin? Can we talk?"

[Electra]

His intuition had been right on as to where he'd find Erin, but she was too busy to notice him for a moment. Today she'd foregone punching for some kind of agility training, or at least that's what he assumed it was. She was standing in a mesh cage in one corner of the gym, and almost the second Eli walked in, a machine at the center of the cage activated and began firing tennis balls at her at a tremendous rate of speed. As soon as the barrage began, she was in motion, jumping and flipping around the cage to avoid the projectiles, which seemed to be everywhere. If it weren't for his own impressive capabilities, he might not have been able to follow the action at all.

The drill lasted about a minute, then the machine powered down. Erin stepped out of the cage to retrieve a very mundane ball hopper, and that's when she noticed Dynamo standing there. She sized him up warily, taking in the flowers and the subdued expression, but didn't find any answers that added up well. "What are you doing here?" she asked bluntly.

[Geez3r]

"Well... I've pretty much been an ***hat the entire time you've known me." stated Eli also bluntly. "The last time we talked, I didn't do or say anything that could ever be considered even remotely "right". I couldn't leave it like that. I hurt you. So I came here to try an apologize. So uh... will you hear me out?" asked Eli tentatively as he sort of half held out the flowers. He felt like he was offering up some sort of sacrifice to a heathen god so it wouldn't send a plague to his village. A thought he was smart enough to keep buried in his skull, rather than speak aloud.

[Electra]

Unsure of what else to do, Erin set down the hopper and took the flowers from him, holding them in both hands. It was an impressive display, all sorts of cheerful bright flowers in a square crystal vase. Despite the circumstances, she had to resist the urge to put her face in them and smell them. Instead, she looked around to see who else was in the gym. It wasn't empty today, a couple students were using the weight equipment and someone was doing yoga on the mats, but everyone was far enough away to be out of earshot, if they'd even cared. She pursed her lips. "If you came here to talk about my private life again, or why you think I don't have any friends, don't even bother," she told him. "If it's something else, I'm listening."

[Geez3r]

"We're gonna go with something else; I hope I'm done lodging my foot down my throat." said Eli trying to crack a joke. "Look. I'm an idiot. I realize that now. I should have known earlier, but as we just discussed, I was an idiot. After out last discussion, I took a second look at Young Freedom. I completely had it all wrong. You guys are tight. You've got each others backs through thick and thin. I just didn't see it. I guess it was because I couldn't see me and my friends doing that back in high school. Look, you've got something good going here, and its everything a good person like you deserves. For ever even insinuating otherwise, I am truly and deeply sorry."

[Electra]

Erin relaxed fractionally at his apparent sincerity, though she was still half-expecting him to be setting her up for something. A skunk didn't change its stink, as her grandmother had always said, and she wasn't sure why someone who'd been so abrasive and aggressive on their last meeting should be acting so much differently now. But, she supposed, he had come after her on the night of the fights, and been at least passably nice to her then. She decided she was at least willing to entertain the possibility that he was actually sorry. "My team is very important to me," she agreed. "You probably understand that, since you're on one too."

[Geez3r]

"Yeah they are." agreed Eli. "It took some time but I think I figured out just how much it meant to me, and to you." Eli hestitated for a moment before he continued. "I'm not sure if you know this, but on my team, we got Grimlakin right? Pixie ninja chick. Anyways, the Interceptors aren't her first team. She was on the Knights of Freedom before that team sort of imploded. Now I don't know any details beyond that, Grim's been mum on it. But any time she mentions it, I can see her eyes darken and her voice gets a little colder. It just ain't like her. Something happened with that team, and I'm not sure they count all their old members as friends anymore.

A team is supposed to be like your family, and I didn't want you to think anything other than that with Young Freedom. I don't want to see anyone else go through that, especially if they don't have to. It was wrong of me to put stupid, uninformed thoughts like that in your head. If I could, I'd erase the conversation from existence. But the best I can do is give you flowers and say I'm sorry. So, I'm sorry."

[Electra]

Erin hesitated for a moment, not quite sure if she was ready to be done being angry. She thought she could've eked out some more annoyance, even though Eli really did seem sorry, but she made enough conversational faux pas of her own to think it might be bad karma not to forgive someone else's missteps. "It's okay," she finally told him, relaxing enough to sniff the flowers. "I talked it over with some of my friends and worked it out. It's not like you scarred me for life or anything. Are you still going to be coming around for training?"

[Geez3r]

"Oh I don't know. That Archer guy, yeesh." joked Eli as he suppressed a shudder. "But on the other hand, that Z girl, completely forget her name, put down a faster time than me, and I wanna see if I can beat it. Suppose either way I got the fastest man alive title, but know that I know it's possible to do better, I want to see if I can ya know? Roger Bannister was the first to run the 4 minute mile, and everyone thought it was impossible, but once he did it, people have been able to repeat it. But I suppose you know a bit about friendly competition too seeing as where we are."

[Electra]

"They remind us the only one we're competing against is ourselves, and I try to keep that in mind most of the time," Erin said with a shrug. "Works for me, cause I'm kind of a generalist. Pretty good at a lot of things, but not the best at anything." She finally cracked a smile, though it was a faint one. "I still make sure to trounce James in Mario Kart once every couple weeks, just to keep him humble. Zoe'd probably give you a race any time you asked. She's definitely one of the competitive ones. How far did you race?" she asked, curious almost in spite of herself at how two such fast people would have a footrace.

[Geez3r]

"Don't sell yourself short. By being a generalist, you don't have real weakness to exploit. I may be obnoxiously fast, but a broken nose sucks as much for me as it does for the next guy." A compliment was always good, and Eli believed that the mental image of him sporting a broken nose was just icing on the cake. "Zoe! Yeah, that was her name!" Eli considered for a moment trying to remember the details of the run he had done. "Well the time trial they had me do is like standard fare for speedsters. They set it all up in the VR somehow, and basically see how far you can go in 1 minute. I think I was just shy of like 20 laps around the Earth. I'm better at longer distances, but Zoe can sprint like nobody's business." Erin could tell Eli wasn't trying to brag, but was having a hard time of it.

[Electra]

"In a fight, I'm glad to be a generalist any day," Erin assured him. "It's just in competition that it's not quite so useful. And Zoe's really fast. You'll have your work cut out for you if you want to try and beat her." She walked over to her duffel bag and set the flowers down, then picked up the ball hopper again. "I actually met someone else from your team the other week," she said, ducking into the mesh cage and collecting the tennis balls by pressing the hopper down onto them. "Fulcrum, the really tall one. She suggested that your stories of drinking beer and watching TV all weekend might have been exaggerated." Even if she was going to forgive, that didn't mean she couldn't give him a bit of a hard time, she figured.

[Geez3r]

Oh yeah? Fulcrum's really nice. I don't know here all that well yet to be honest. She's real new to the team as well, but isn't around as much as everyone else is. She does her own thing on the side, which may or may not include Archeville." replied Eli as followed Erin up to the training site. He was rather curious how it worked. "I didn't mean those stories literally." explained Eli. "I meant that the Interceptors were laid back, and you didn't feel pressure with them. We don't need a city in danger for us to be together, we can just hang out. Guess the analogy works better with a different demographic." He helped Erin gather up all the tennis balls as he was talking.

[Electra]

"What's Archeville?" Erin asked, making quick work of the balls on one side of the training cage. It seemed to be a fairly simple operation, one machine in the center that looked like a cross between a tennis-ball shooter from a racquet club and heavy artillery seemed to do all the work, and the mesh was just there to keep anyone not in on the exercise from getting beaned. "She's going to be helping me with some training, since we've got some fighting style in common. And we're together all the time in Young Freedom. I mean, we all live in the same building, eat in the same caf, go to the same parties and classes and stuff. Not a lot of beer involved most of the time," she admitted. "Doesn't do anything for me anyhow."

[Geez3r]

"Not what, who. Dr. Archeville. That obnoxiously smart and rich German scientist. He's only like the most influential dude on the planet. Can't believe you haven't heard of him." said Eli in disbelief. "Jeez. What're they teaching kids these days?" jokes Eli with mock outrage. "Yeah, booze don't affect me like it used to. Now mind, I never got drunk, I was always safe; mostly because I wouldn't trust the guys I was with. But getting my powers has pretty much just destroyed my diet. I have to watch what I eat, but in the opposite way. 'Can I put more sugar in this?' 'Is there a way to get a few thousand more carbs in this?' It's ridiculous."

[Electra]

"Oh, yeah, I've heard of him," Erin said. "It's just the way you said it, I... oh." The lightbulb finally went on, and she decided to let that one go. "You could have worse problems, I guess. If you could find a way to bottle that, you'd make a million dollars. But you should stop by the caf while you're here, they've got some kind of milkshake that's got like literally twenty-thousand calories in it that's just for the super high metabolism type. I only eat every couple days anyway, but I've seen people get them. I guess it's probably easier to drink one of those than try to eat thirty hamburgers." She poured the tennis balls back into the machine and checked it to make sure there were no clogs. "Do you always eat like that, or just when you're working out?"

[Geez3r]

Eli snerked a bit when the lightbulb went off Erin's head, but didn't press the matter, mostly because he was still trying to wrap his head around the physics involved. "Yeah we got something like that back at the HQ. It's pretty much like nectar on steroids. A shot of that mess a normal person up something fierce, if not just put them in a diabetic coma. If I don't do much other than study and play video games, I think I only eat like 20,000 calories. I never pay that much attention to be honest. But if I work out, go on patrol, and especially if I get in a fight, I empty the fridge. Like I'm just short of licking the ice off the sides of the freezer.

I'd thought you'd be the same way, what with how many physical powers you got. Guess there's some sort of sciency explanation for it, but to be honest that junk's a bit out of my league."

[Electra]

Erin shrugged. "I have a superefficient metabolism, it takes a minimum of food and sleep for me to get by. I can eat just about anything, even if it's hardly food at all, and do okay most of the time. But when I've been working I need more, same as you. And sometimes it's just fun to eat, or sociable or whatever. I don't really know how it was all designed to work, but I do okay. Mike's powers are totally natural and he only eats as much as a regular person, so I don't know." She motioned for him to pass her the balls he'd picked up. "You tried this one yet?"

[Geez3r]

"Guess it's a totally crap shoot then." replied Eli as he was wondering who the heck Mike was, but figured it wasn't the sort of thing to ask someone. "Might have something to do with all the electricity I make, not really sure how that all works out. I really should have Doc do an analysis at some point. He does that for people apparently. Oop, here ya go." says Eli as he hands over the arm full of tennis balls. "Nah. I was only here the one time, and they had me in the VR thing the whole time. They were just trying to figure out where I fell on the spectrum of things. But I'll give it a shot if that's what you're getting at."

[Electra]

"Sure, if you want," Erin told him. "It's kind of fun trying to avoid all the balls without crashing through the mesh or tripping over one on the ground." Remembering what he'd said about a bloody nose, she unhitched the tennis ball feeder and carried it out of the cage, returning with one full of what looked like orange Nerf balls. "They have a solid core," she told Eli, "so they fly fast, but they won't hurt you if you get hit with one. Just push the button when you're ready, and it'll give you five seconds lead time. If you do train here, they'll find more sophisticated stuff to train you on, but this works for practice." She ducked out of the cage and sealed it with the Velcro tabs, watching from just outside.

[Geez3r]

"Cool, thanks!" he said as she swapped out the new ones. Totally thought she was going to stick to the tennis balls and watch me get beaned around a little bit. Guess she's forgiven me a little. But better not push my luck. Eli untucked his shirt and undid the button at the collar so he would have more freedom of movement. Street clothes weren't exactly designed for handling super powers. Done with the preparations, he walked over to the machine and hit the button before hurriedly retreating a few steps.

While the barrage was feirce, Eli didn't seem to have any trouble evading the projectiles. While not as flexible as Erin, his total body coordination was right up there with her her own. But he was still a lot faster and was able to avoid them without all the flips Erin had to do. "Whew." breathed Eli as the last ball bounced off the mesh. "That's pretty cool. Gotta see if Vince can rig up something like this."

[Electra]

"Nicely done," Erin told him with a nod. "Didn't look like you got tagged at all." There might have been some small satisfaction in watching Eli get pelted with nerf balls, but she'd known ahead of time that he was much too fast. Besides, that wasn't a heroic impulse. "There's not much to it, you can probably get the specs for the cannon from the school, and the rest is just having something to keep whatever projectile you're using from hitting any bystanders. And if Fulcrum's got an in with Doctor Archeville, he could probably rig up something a lot more sophisticated, with laser guided tennis balls or something that could even keep up with you."

[Geez3r]

"Yeah, Doc's got some sort of super DDR thing hooked up for us. I got two left feet though, as Grim so constantly reminds me. But just between you and me, if you ever mention some sort of freaky super cannon thing in front of Doc, he gets this weird gleam in his eye, just for a moment. Doc's good people, don't get me wrong, but he's wound pretty tight. Anywho, I'm going to have to get going. And again, I'm sorry I was such a jerk."

[Electra]

"It's okay," Erin told him, picking up the hopper to collect the balls again. "Forget about it." Everybody said stupid things sometimes, and if he would leave her personal life alone, then she figured they could get along fine. "Thanks for the flowers," she added, "and good luck with the training. I'll see you around." She began sweeping the hopper around, collecting the nerf balls with a practiced hand.