Habitat for Metahumanity (IC)

[quotemyname]

Blueshift approached the fire, lifted her bowl of chili from where she'd left it on the rocks of the fire pit to keep it warm, and parked herself squarely between Push and Jubatus. "J, thanks for your help today. It would have been impossible to get things done before dinner without you. How's that voice modulator doing?"

She took a large scoop of the chili, opened wide, and shoveled it into her mouth. She let out a pleased, "Mhmm!" while chewing, smiling at Push. Once she'd swallowed, she added, "Mmm meat." The next bite of chili was already in her mouth by the time she'd realized what he'd said. Eyes, wide, her face turned red, and not from the peppers. "Mpphf" She swallowed, "I mean. Um. Push. Good chili." She turned her face to the fire, looking slightly ashamed of herself, and spooned another mouthful out of the bowl, eating incredibly fast as she always did.

[Azuth65]

Marceau had stared in amazement as Wisp and Jubatus dug and built an outhouse in a matter of minutes. Setting himself to the task of putting together the Command Center, he glanced every now and then to them, in evident awe. Once the Center was built, and the assembled workers were gathered around the fire, he decided to try and strike up a conversation Wisp, seeing as Jubatus seemed a bit touchy about questions regarding his condition, and he'd often wondered...

"S'cuse me, Mz. Wisp, Marceau Suvou, I've often wondered how teleportation works. Is it bending space or something? most reports of it I've read are oddly vague." He took a hefty bite of chili, adding after swallowing noiselessly "By the way, thanks for digging that pit. It would have taken ages to dig a respectable latrine hole in the sand, our being past the tide-line or no."

Wisp finished her second helping of chili before most of the group was more than two-thirds done with their first. Polishing the last of it off as Marceau asked his question she paused a moment to chew and swallow her mouthful. "You know, that's a rather good question actually. I never really thought about how it works so much as being glad that it works, you know? All I can really tell you is that it burns calories like you wouldn't believe and feels kind of like taking a long step through a corridor filled by one of those fog machines."

"As for the pit, not a problem. No point in trying to dig one when one person can take care of several shovelfuls worth in just a few seconds," she added.

[Cubist]

"Here, J, look at this."

Jubatus looked over the holographic 'blueprints' Blueshift had shown him. It seemed like a reasonable design, and if the occasional notes about the place's future uses were any indication, whoever had drawn the plans (Blueshift? or someone else?) had taken the long view when drafting the plans. "Not bad," the feline allowed. "Looks like it'll serve our needs well."

During construction, Jubatus made a point of taking over any task that didn't require fine motor control. His damn forepaws simply weren't as good as hands, that's all there was to it, and it would be a sad, sad joke if a wall collapsed years after the fact because that wall's builder just hadn't been able to hold the hammer properly...

"Thanks for your help today. It would have been impossible to get things done before dinner without you.'

"De nada," Jubatus said with a half-smile. His attention was primarily focussed on the chili in the bowl before him... yummy smell indeed!

How's that voice modulator doing?"

Voice modulator? What -- oh, that thing, Jube thought. "Don't know -- haven't tried it yet," he replied. "I tried to tell you it wasn't necessary, but you were on a serious roll. I'll check it over when I get home, and let you know." And then, belatedly, he registered the disappointment on her face when he said he hadn't even tried to use her gizmo. Oh, hell. Gotta throw her a bone -- "But... if you're looking for a problem that does need a solution, here's one:" And he raised one forepaw to Blueshift's eye-level, giving her an excellent view of the appendage. It only had three digits, which were a good deal shorter and stubbier than real fingers. Jube rotated his forepaw slowly, for a 360-degree view, as he went on. "My so-called hands. Compared to real hands, human hands, they suck -- apart from the obvious physical deficits, manual dexterity just isn't all there. Got anything in your belt of tricks to fix that?"

[Ari]

This response was utterly unlike what he had been expecting, and there was a long pause before Marcy spoke again, digesting this(to him) deeply important piece of information. Its importance in his eyes was bound up in his expectation that one of the first things most powers did was try and discover the source of their abilities. While he had admittedly not the foggiest idea how his worked, it wasn't due to lack of trying. On the other hand, he realized that someone who got powers because a certain series of stars were placed in a certain fashion so as to visible in a certain section of sky on one solitary planet was pretty difficult to explain itself. Wisp's were probably perfectly explicable.

After clearing a bowl or two of chili(which flowed into him with a feeling like liquid love and charity), he turned to Wisp and said: "Have you found any direct relationship? as in, one teleport of yourself takes so much energy, while you and another takes such and such, and so on?" Turning to Push, he added earnestly "Good chili, mind telling how its made? there are a lot of guys back home who'd love this stuff."

[Quinn]

Push stood with a stick, stirring the still considerable amount of chili. Somehow, he'd replaced the floppy hat he'd been wearing with an even bigger and floppier chef's hat, standing somewhat separate from the conversation. Not that he'd been trying to be standoffish, but he'd always been a little awkward with groups outside of when he was 'on the clock'. Banter was easy. Small talk with one person? Doable. But groups he had a tendency to just stand at the edges. He'd been a lot like that before he got his powers, come to think of it. Always up to his arms in engine grease rather than socializing.

The kineticist shook himself out of his reverie, motioning to the pot below him. "Not all that tough, just get a mess of ground beef, tomatoes, onions, jalapeno peppers, ground chili peppers, mix well, and throw in whatever makes it smell better. That's all cooking is, mate, lots of trial and error. Work with your nose, tongue, and ears, they taste better than, well...paper?"

A wry smile creased his face under the bandanna as he let the metaphor get away from him, and it struck him on a somewhat meta level also regarding the discussion of teleportation. A lot of what he had to do back when he woke up in the L.A.R, figuring out how his abilities worked was trial and error, and mounting repair bills.

[Azuth65]

This response was utterly unlike what he had been expecting, and there was a long pause before Marcy spoke again, digesting this(to him) deeply important piece of information. Its importance in his eyes was bound up in his expectation that one of the first things most powers did was try and discover the source of their abilities. While he had admittedly not the foggiest idea how his worked, it wasn't due to lack of trying. On the other hand, he realized that someone who got powers because a certain series of stars were placed in a certain fashion so as to visible in a certain section of sky on one solitary planet was pretty difficult to explain itself. Wisp's were probably perfectly explicable.

Wisp could see her explanation didn't exactly satisfy and silently cursed herself for not thinking up a better cover story but 'Well, my dad was a spy during the cold war and signed up for an super-serum project' might not have been a great thing to spread around.

After clearing a bowl or two of chili(which flowed into him with a feeling like liquid love and charity), he turned to Wisp and said: "Have you found any direct relationship? as in, one teleport of yourself takes so much energy, while you and another takes such and such, and so on?"

[quotemyname]

A lot of things were happening all at once. There were many conversations, and even more input. Blueshift wouldn't know where to start. Except that she didn't have to. Her mind took it all in, and even had time roll everyone's words over for consideration before responding. She'd already memorized Push's recipe for good chili (not that she could cook), and converted Wisp system of burger measurements to Kilojoules when Jubatus held up his paw. At that moment, her face was partially obscured by a bowl of chili. She paused only momentarily to look at the apendage before pouring the rest of the hot pepper brew down her throat.

Placing the bowl on the rocks by the fire once more, she leaned over and seized Jubatus' hand. Her method of problem solving was quick and to the point. Unfortunately that left her overstepping bounds of personal space more times than she could count without even realizing it. Before knew what was going on, she'd already been studying his hand. Though the speedster's physical quickness could likely have gotten him loose at any moment, he still wasn't sure what she was doing. That is until one of her instruments tested his reflexes by delivering a small shock to one of his joints. Noticing she was no longer holding her test subject, she thoughtfully said, "Just as I thought. No. Not on my belt. But, good news. I can make something." She did reveal another contraption from her belt. It was a grabber like instrument. It had two finger like instruments that clamped together. "A glove of sorts. Based on this." She held a wire up to her head, and the fingers clamped together. "Operates on brain synapses. You think about grabbing something..." The fingers clinked again, "Glove does the rest." She smiled, and offered the small device to Jubatus, "Do you think something like that'll work?" In reality, she already knew the answer to that question.

[Ari]

While Wisp explained the criteria by which she gauged the energy needed after each teleport, Marceau kept a careful ear on her exposition, while watching Blueshift present Jubatus with the thought-operated glove. Shaking his head slightly in amazement with a look of sadness on his face, he commented to to Wisp that "With such devices all but springing from her head, your teleportation skills, your" he nodded to Push and Jubatus "Ability to levitate, and your incredible speed, I must confess to feeling a mite superfluous." He kept the dour look for all of three seconds before bursting into booming laughter like a drunk sea lion, at last needing to sit down unsteadily on the sand. After he'd finished, he wiped away the tears that had rolled down his cheeks, saying as he did "In all seriousness, thank you for coming to help. This would have been an arduous and dangerously time-consuming process otherwise." He fell silent for a short time.

After a moment, he glanced up at Blueshift. "Mz. Blueshift, where are we starting the next construction phase, by which I mean where in relation to the Command Center will the other structures go?"

[Cubist]

Having previously noted Blueshift's behavioral quirks, Jubatus wasn't terribly shocked when she grabbed at his forepaw -- One more datapoint for her profile, he did not say aloud -- and probed at its various digits and joints and so on, so he went along with it. The feline was, however, surprised that she had any device on hand even marginally suitable for the purpose of shoring up his forepaws' deficiencies in fine control: It's not the sort of thing that's likely to come up under normal circumstances, so why the heck is she... carrying...

Oh.

Right.

Mirror image, Jube thought. She's got my fetish for overpreparedness; wonder what other traits we share?

"A glove of sorts. Based on this." She held a wire up to her head, and the fingers clamped together. "Operates on brain synapses. You think about grabbing something..." The fingers clinked again, "Glove does the rest."

Jubatus accepted the device almost hesitantly; as a firm believer that 'anything which seems too good to be true probably is', he reflexively rejected the notion that this spur-of-the-moment gizmo could possibly live up to its press releases. But... she is a gadgeteer... so maybe...

"Do you think something like that'll work?"

"Hrrr... it'd be nice to think so..." Holding the free end of the thing's wire gingerly, Jube brought it up to his forehead -- and the pincers instantly snapped shut with a nasty KLAKK! He upshifted before Blue had time to notice the seeming malfunction...

Okay, what's the deal here? Jube thought to himself. Worked fine when she tried it, so why not for me? What's different... oh, bloody hell. And Jubatus knew what was different about him: The Timeshift, which he needed to turn on just to interact with normal-speed people at their tempo of 1. His Time-field didn't extend more than a few inches from his body; that meant the gizmo's wire was only partially contained within his Time-field, and the signals it carried varied in speed by a factor of 6 over a linear space of a few inches. Right: Synchronization issues. No wonder the gizmo locked up on me! Obvious solution: Make sure the wire stayed close to his skin at all times, so that no part of it was ever hanging loose at any moment. Fine: A few feet of Ace bandage from my first aid kit should do the job. And...

...it worked. The pincers did indeed snap open and closed at his unspoken command -- KLAKK-KLAKK.

[quotemyname]

Pleased to see that her roughshod invention did in fact work, Blueshift simply smiled and turned to address Marceau. "Good question. Picture the command center as one end. All the new houses running in rows." She made an overhead gesture with her hand down the beach line, "Like this. Total length, about two football fields. That's 240 yards, approximately. and Four rows. Each of the outside rows face in. Each inside row faces out. Forms two streets."

Blueshift pulled yet another small device from her belt. Clicking a button it projected a floating map, projecting what the area would look like in the near future. The map could zoom in on different structures, and even had the ability to be operated by speech by the others (Jubatus had to hold the voice modulator to his throat to make it respond properly to his commands). For the rest of the night, the team ate their fill of chili, and talked over their plans for the building process the morning after.

When the fire finally started smoldering out, most of the group retreated to the command center one by one to get some well needed rest. All except for Blueshift, who was busy drawing things in the sand with a stick near where the roaring fire used to be...

[Quinn]

Sleep was never easy for Push. Call it a quirk, but two years of chasing a man who had demons and eldrich powers at his beck and call would cause more than a few nightmares, and Push's memories were full to bursting with fairly nasty ones. Tonight, it was a moving picture show of a battle in New Orleans; a flooded basement where a trio of giant...well, he really could only call them snake demons, sinuous things with razor-sharp fangs and glassy black eyes tried to drag him down to a watery grave. He had just reached the point where he'd managed to fight back, blowing the whole basement out and collapsing the roof onto the monsters, when the dream turned into a nightmare, and he felt his power vanish, to be replaced by the cold, wet black of the water as he was dragged down...

The kineticist sat bolt upright in his cot, eyes wide, and a bolt of energy coalescing in his hands as he pointed it here and there around his tent. A familiar weariness piled in on his shoulders, and he sagged, letting the energy dissipate. No sleep tonight, obviously. A few minutes later, Push's tent flap flipped open, and the man came out, dressed in a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, looking at the night sky with a face that looked like death twice warmed over. Noting Blueshift by the fire, Push decided to skip reapplying the bandanna, and he idly walked over and poured himself a bowl of leftover chili, placing it in the coals to warm up. Mutely, he then sat down and stared into the flames, almost grunting a hello.

[Cubist]

Jubatus' sleep pattern was... odd, by human standards. Rather than one solid bloc of eight hours, he took a nontrivial number of catnaps, scattered more-or-less evenly throughout the day. He assumed he still dreamed, but this was an assumption, as he couldn't remember any dreams he might have had since the fur coat got permanently installed. In any case, Jube spent a good bit of his evenings awake while normal people were asleep. Tonight was no exception; he couldn't help but notice that Push and Blueshift were having trouble with nightmares or something. Well, if they wanted any help with it, they could presumably ask.

For his part, the cheetah was practicing with the 'glove' Blueshift had gimmicked up for him. KLAKK-KLAKK! Yes, he could get it to snap open and snap closed on command. Sadly, that was all he could get it to do -- it didn't seem to want to move at less than its maximum speed, nor exert less than the maximum level of force its motors/'muscles' could generate. An on/off switch without any volume control. If the thing's sensors were designed to work with human-normal nerve impulses, that might actually be the best he could do with it... well, what the hell. Tomorrow would be soon enough to give the 'glove' a workout in more-or-less real-world circumstances. In the meantime, he'd see if he could get the 'glove' to behave in a more controllable manner.

[Ari]

For his part, Marceau lay stretched out on the sands, arms behind his head for a pillow, without so much as a futon or a stretched tarp over him. After two years of being slowly suffocated in the city, sleeping out under the stars was an incredibly refreshing experience. That said, the nearby forest still lingered in his thoughts even in sleep, filling his dreams with visions of him stealthily creeping through the jungles of Cambodia, ears alert for the least sound, jumping nearly out of his skin at every wandering binturong or foraging banteng that walked past without warning, while all around he could hear the rumbling growls of ravenous tigers, and every now and again a flash of a green eye would warn him away from some patch of dense brush.

Briefly awakening at some imagined sound, he watched the stars above, still muddled by sleep. Deciding he might as well refresh his memory, he silently recited the contsellations, tracing their paths about the sky. He'd got confused by a seemingly misplaced Crux, and was about to start over when he saw Push walk over to the fire and start in on some leftover chili. Figuring a jot of conversation wouldn't hurt, he got up, brushed the sand from himself, strolled over to the fire and sat down next to Push. Smiling politely to him he asked with evident concern "Trouble sleeping, Mr. Push? I sympathize."

[Azuth65]

Wish sat on her cot, sketchbook on her legs. While she might be working on this charity project during spring break, she had packed so she'd be slightly ahead of her art and creative writing assignments whens she returned. The page had been filled with a rather odd scene she'd drawn, something that looked like a cross between a Dungeons & Dragons game and A Fistful of Dollars filled the page. By the time she'd finished drawing the wizard/gunslinger blasting a four-armed ogre with a torrent of ice, it was close to midnight. While she wanted to get the inking done for this piece, she knew if she did there would be no way she'd get any sleep.

Reluctantly she turned off her light and laid down, doing her best to ignore the sounds of those outside who were having a bought with insomnia.

[quotemyname]

Whether it was insomnia, or nightmares that kept them up, the fire had three heroes keeping it company that night. "Hey." Blueshift replied to the various greetings,

By now, her doodles in the sand had grown. They now depicted the various constellations in the sky. It was a perfect drawing, though neither of the other two fireside visitors had seen her look upward yet. They were also not the Hatian constellations, but those from the skies above Freedom City. With no image to draw from, it was a wonder she had gotten it all right.

"You'd think," she sighed, "That with as fast as my brain can think, it'd get enough done during the day. Can't invent an off switch. Not for my own head. Too bad." She looked up at the other two, though the stick in her hand kept connecting the dots between remembered stars in the sand, "You two? Insomnia? Something else?"

[Cubist]

Jay Xavier yawned and stretched as he woke up from his second catnip of this evening. It was an autonomic reaction -- he never had been able to avoid that feline ritual when he woke up, and he hoped to Morpheus that none of the people he was accompanying saw it. On the plus side, he was always at his default tempo of 6 -- six times quicker than normal -- when he did the yawn-and-stretch thing, so there was a decent chance that anybody who did see it wouldn't recognize what they were looking at.

He hoped.

Jay upshifted for a superspeed patrol of the area -- the entire area that they'd be building on, plus 50 meters further on all sides. It was just a precaution; he didn't actually expect to find any evidence of hostile activity, but considering how messed-up Haiti was, not to mention the psychotic freaks who constituted the environmental movement's lunatic fringe, he greatly preferred to err on the side of caution.

Okay, he always preferred to err on the side of caution, regardless of what the current circumstances might be. But even so, it just made sense to be watchful. Didn't it?

As it happened, the cheetah didn't find anything untoward. Except maybe the fire, with Push, Blueshift, and Marceau around it... no, eavesdropping from a safe distance proved that those three just weren't sleepy. It simply didn't occur to Jay to sit down and join their conversation, so instead, he returned to his own bivouacking spot and resumed his attempts to tame the unruly 'glove' Blueshift had improvised for him. Klak-KLAKK. Klak-KLAKK. Klak-KLAKK...

[Ari]

At Blueshift's question, Marceau shrugged "Not so much insomnia as being out of practice in sleeping outside, forgotten how jarring sounds out here, when there isn't a constant thrum of sound to even out the noise level." He caught sight of the star map, and a quick glance showed him the stars portrayed in the sand had no relation to the ones above, he guessed they had something to do with Blueshift's upbringing. Light pollution and lack of time had cut down heavily on stargazing. In fact, the nights he'd been out in Freedom had almost always been clouded anyway, which confused him deeply until he realized that the city was right next to the sea.

"Anyway, this was such a beautiful night, with the sky so clear, that I figured it'd be a shame to waste all of by sleeping, haven't seen the stars in years now." he paused to search the sky for Crux again, though this time he was so out count he gave up quickly. "Which stars would those be, Mz.? I don't recognize them.". It was then that he head the sharp, metal-striking-metal noise nearby. Having no real idea of what the sound was, his imagination was given a blank check and ordered to "Make something terrifying". It happily obliged.

In a flash, he was back in Cambodia, the jungle pressing in around him like a dimly-lit green cage, with every step potentially ending in a hail of gunfire, and he'd just heard the tell-tale 'kla-chck' of a warlord's minion in the brush, readying his firearm. Unprepared for sudden action so soon after waking, Marceau's attempt to jump into action simply meant he fell over. Recovering hurriedly, he got back up blushing with embarrassment. Mumbling "Sorry 'bout that, I get jumpy at night", he brushed the sand from his coveralls, returning to his previous position and speedily regaining his composure.

[Quinn]

Push saved his response for when he'd swallowed the mouthful of leftover chili, and it was nearly inaudible. Coughing, he repeated the statement, shrugging. He gave thanks that the fire didn't light up his face very well, or the other two might have seen the bags under his eyes that indicated a distinct lack of sleep.

"Just a bad dream. Have them occasionally when sleeping in an unfamiliar place. Give it a day or two, should be okay."

Taking some care, he tried to ensure his face itself wasn't facing the fire, for dual purposes. One, evening fires tended to kill your night vision, and staring into them wasn't really a good idea period, and two, without the bandanna he had to trust in enough silhouettes to obscure his facial features. When Marceau fell over at the klak-KLAKK sound, Push reflexively looked up and his hand whipped up to behind his shoulder, where the haft of his hammer would usually be. Stopping abruptly, he looked at his arm, then at Marceau, then he chuckled, calling over to their furry compatriot.

"S'ok, I know the feeling. How's the glove workin', Jube?"

[Cubist]

"... How's the glove workin', Jube?"

"As designed," Jay called back in a tone of voice... that was just too alien to interpret. Hmmm... maybe he can help? Jay thought. Not a sure thing, but anyone who stinks of oil that bad probably works with gears and such, and since he's a hero-type, it's not a bad bet that he can tinker with other flavors of machinery, too. And then the cheetah moved over in front of Push, leaving his Timeshift completely off whilst he was en route and therefore 'only' moving at his default tempo of six times faster than normal in transit. When he arrived, Jay downshifted to the normal tempo of 1 and asked, "You any good with electronics and/or computers?"

[quotemyname]

"They're Freedom's stars. From memory. Northeastern hemisphere. Spring." She only glanced up at Marceau. Then she poked the stick toward Push. "You're lucky. It never lets up with me. At least you are able to get used to it sometimes. It's the only problem I have yet to find a solution for."

How did it get so crowded out here? Alone one second. Bam. People. Blueshift thought. Despite the tendency of superheroes to congregate where something was amiss, her own insomnia, or Push's restlessness didn't seem like a big deal. Oh well. Might as well try for sleep again. She stood from her place near the fire. "Gonna lie down." She tossed her stick into the fire. "One more go." She gave the group a wan smile, and began trudging back toward the house.

The boys were outside, and it was only her and Wisp inside. Blueshift climbed onto her small cot, and used the bug netting to obscure herself while she changed out of her suit. She left her hair blond, to maintain the illusion of being in costume. From there, the night was all tossing and turning...

[Ari]

Marceau soon left the campsite,wandering over to a stretch of clear sand near the water's edge and lying down on it, little caring about the small pebble boring into his back. He felt acutely self-conscious over his abruptly jolted memory, and was uneasy over what the brief spell might be forecasting in the realm of his generally peaceful mind.

His rumination was short-lived due to the close rhythm of the water, which sent him swiftly into a peaceful black void bereft of fears of any kind. Awakening a few hours before sunrise, he practically jumped into a run around the building site, went into his exercise routine with gusto, and by nine in the morning had caught at least a half dozen large fish which were soon sizzling over the re-kindled fire.

[quotemyname]

GM ONLY

The heroes enjoyed a nice breakfast of fish that day thanks to Marceau. After breakfast, their entire camp was a rush of activity. The blueprints as Blueshift laid them out were to construct a miniature city within a week. She claimed it would be possible due to her calculations thanks to the speed and power of the heroes assembled.

By the end of the first day, they had constructed the first one hundred feet of the miniature city or so. They were all two room beach bungalows meant to house a single family. They were clean, safe, and above ground. Every twenty five feet or so, There was another location marked off for out houses, but they'd received orders not to begin construction on those. They'd be put in later once the decision came through about resolving the regulations that pertained to them. For now, the group was just supposed to build houses.

From the "Command Center" as they began to call it stretched two miniature roads. There were two rows of houses per road both facing toward the road. Four rows of houses, by one hundred feet of finished construction was a total of 20 houses able to hold a total of 20 families. The team was doing good work, and the best part was, they were getting it done ahead of schedule!

That night, there was another meal around the fire before the group turned in once more...

[Ari]

Marceau had decided to retain his armor(which he usually slept in anyway)for working in the next day, assuming that the hot Haitian sun wouldn't prove much of an issue to him, an assumption in which he was correct. Unfortunately, the Haitian sand proved much more of a problem, and he had had to take advantage of the outhouse breaks to periodically clean the grit from the armored jumpsuit, which thankfully only took about eight minutes.

Now he relaxed in the quiet and darkness, only slightly stiff from the exertions of the day, and nearly half-asleep. "Great job everybody!" he called out to the general assembly, "At this rate, we're likely to run out of wood before our time's up". Turning to Push he added cheerfully : "By the way, Push, That is one fine hammer you've got there. Did you make it?"

[quotemyname]

Unlike Marceau, Blueshift actually spent the day building without her costume. She'd traded the blue body suit for a pair of short jean shorts that allowed her to move, as well as prevented her from suffering in the hot sun. They were short, but tactful, lacking the fraying and tears that many designer shorts insisted on including these days. A yellow Hello Kitty tank top covered her upper body, falling just passed the top of her jeans. It was bright enough that it could reflect the sunlight, but dark enough that it didn't show most of the sand that was getting all over her. The shirt even matched the color of her costumed hair, and the color of the cheap plastic framed sunglasses she wore. As she required much of her gadgets to keep up with the other's building pace, she'd kept her utility belt strapped loosely around her waist. Without the body suit to fasten it to, however, she found it kept slipping off her hips whenever she leaned too far or bent over. It was an inconvenience that frustrated her the entire day.

Noting Marceau's armored appearance, she made a few comments time and again that day about her curiosity on the subject of his keeping cool. She theorized time and again when he passed by about coolant engines, and thermal plating, and a multitude of other useful invention designs and whether or not he was using any of them on the inside of the armor. His ability to trudge around in that heavy equipment all day was nearly as frustrating to her as her belt.

Finally, as the sun set, she returned to where they kept their bunks, their beloved command center. After another fireside meal, she announced she was turning in, but despite the early turn in. She'd be tossing and turning all night as usual.

[Cubist]

Jubatus, as was his habit, did not initiate any conversations of a social nature all day. Requests for information or clarification, yes; offering up ideas for how to solve a sticky problem, yes; "how are you doing, [insert name of person here]", no. Of course, the feline was quick enough to speak up when someone else was making an idiotic mistake, but the people he was now working with were all blessedly competent, so that hardly ever happened.

Jube's therapist had told him often enough that he really ought to work on his interpersonal skills, and he agreed, in principle. This simply wasn't a good time for such things; he and the others had a job to do, and it was just stupid to waste any time (or attention, or anything else) on at-best-peripheral matters that weren't even vaguely relevant to getting the job done. Then again, Jube's Timeshift power ensured that he, at least, had time to burn. But if he did that -- if he (literally!) made his own Time -- his personal 'clock' would be running much faster than anybody else's. That, in turn, meant the difference in respective tempos would make it impossible for him to interact socially anyway, so it wasn't really a solution to the problem, now was it?

Hmmm. He was the fastest cat alive, so he did have time to burn. Buckets and buckets more time than anybody else here -- pity for it all to go to waste. Well, Jubatus knew what to do with all his extra time. It was common knowledge that superheroes tended to attract super-powered opponents, so he might as well work up some tactical plans just in case any such opponents showed up to hassle this group of superheroes. Granted, he had no way of knowing which opponents might show, let alone what powers they might be wielding, but that just meant he needed to work up several plans for several different hypothetical scenarios. On the plus side, the powers of the people on Jube's side would be a constant, or at least consistent, for all such scenarios. So it would be worth spending a little realtime on inquiring about his comrades' special abilities.

"Hey, Blue; got a question for you. See, being the unkind and deeply paranoid soul I am, I'm worrying about us getting attacked by some random jerkwad or other, maybe even a group of 'em, before we're done here, and I want to be prepared. Just in case, is all. So... what can your battlesuit do?"

After getting Blueshift's answer, Jubatus moved on, gleaning information from Push and Wisp and 'Marcel'...