ic Change is Necessary for Growth [IC]

[trollthumper]

"I find this somewhat discouraging," Wraith admitted, half addressing Summers and her teammates and half just musing out loud. "No, that is not the word. Frustrating, perhaps? I find it somewhat frustrating that so many people gifted with the ability to reshape themselves cannot control themselves, and became dangerous. Is that truly so common?"

"Not that common," Samantha said as she began the tour, "though sometimes it does happen. In many cases, a mutant or other gifted individual will first learn of their powers through an uncontrolled eruption. Some of these are brief incidents where the individual quickly retains control, while others may be long episodes that result in a good deal of damage. It's not just limited to shapeshifting - psychics, magicians, elementalists, and others have bouts where their grasp loosens. Given the turmoil of the teenage mind, it's not unexpected that there may be accidents as they try to master their powers."

"You make it sound like someone spilling their drink, Samantha," said Summers. "Malick underwent his change in the middle of a Columbus Day parade, surrounded by civilians who were already panicking. Things could have gone much worse than they did."

"And I'm grateful for the assistance, Duncan," she said, "but this matter was out of my hands. I didn't encourage Douglas to become a vigilante. I encourage none of my charges to do so until they've shown complete mastery of their abilities in the face of a crisis, and Douglas was a good way from that. I'll be having a long discussion with him once he's back to normal, but until then, I wish to make sure he gets the best care I can provide."

"As do I."

"If you wish to stick around and oversee the therapy, I do have a spare bedroom available in the guest house."

"I have my own charges to attend to, Samantha. I'm pushing it as is now that the long weekend's over. However, if hospitality's being offered, I'd be a fool to turn it down. If housing can be provided for my students, I'd be glad to stay the night. Just so I can make sure that Malick's off on the right foot tomorrow."

"I'd be happy to oblige. Least I can do for that incident with King Cole."

The tour led across the rather sprawling campus of Dunwich. The main building, where most of the classes were held, was obviously the oldest building on campus; odds were it had started life as a mansion before being converted into a schoolhouse. To the west was the athletics building, an old-style gymnasium with a more contemporary add-on -- a full simulation facility, for aid in training the students in combat and emergency circumstances. To the south were the extra classrooms, small, cottage-like buildings that stretched from the back lawn of the school to the edge of the woods. To the east were the dormitories -- one for men, one for women, and one for individuals whose powers required specifically suited housing.

Once the general tour of the grounds was complete, the group swept back towards the main building. In addition to class rooms, it had many of the essentials of your usual school - the nurse's office (here a full medical wing), the administrative centers, the counselors' offices, and of course, the cafeteria. As the tour began to wrap up, students converged from across campus. It was time for dinner. The cafeteria itself was a combination of dining hall and college mess - there were various counters distributing all manners of food at the far end, but the students ate at long, wooden tables, with a faculty table at the head of the room. As Summers and Samantha shared dinner and talked about their days as heroes, the members of Young Freedom joined with the other students, enjoying their meals and hearing the concerns of students whose course load wasn't that different from theirs.

[Avenger Assembled]

Citizen was uncomfortable around all these new faces, especially since he couldn't join in the eating: he'd learned his lesson in India and wasn't going to be filling his projection with food any time he thought he might be about to go into a crisis situation. And if there were other kids at this school like Bastion, maybe doing some of the super-drugs he'd heard about, a crisis could happen at any time. So instead he gravitated to a table with other students in black, pretending to eat his salad while all the time really working on his tablet to try and get a lead on the school's spirit via computer: he had a feeling he'd be far more successful there than if he tried to talk to these people. I wonder what my life would be like if I'd popped out here instead of Freedom City, he thought reflectively. No Miss Americana, that's for sure! I should see what kind of tech people they have...

[Gizmo]

Kimber didn't bother to adopt her usual illusion of corporealism among the local students and although she did pull back the hood of her tattered reaper cloak, her domino mask remained firmly in place. The proverbial cat was already out of the bag that the visiting group consisted of super powered individuals and there was little reason for anyone to assume she wasn't just an ordinary metahuman affecting some type of intangibility. Besides, there was something about the school that made her reluctant to let her guard down. For the most part it felt like Claremont or any other high school, but the poltergeist could sense sour spikes of anxiety that caused her masked eyes to narrow momentarily in a predatory fashion before she blinked the expression away. "Guys, some of them seem pretty scared they're going to transform, too," she whispered to her friends, floating closer to the ground than usual. "I think maybe it's not just Bastion's powers that are all wiggy."

[KnightDisciple]

Cobalt Templar (for he didn't really even want to think of himself by his real identity here) cautiously eyed the rest of the lunchroom as he and his team found seats. He ended up on one side of the table from the others, his sheer size inadvertently giving him a fair bit of elbow room. He tucked his notable cape in somewhat, but after one person nearly tripped over it, he just dismissed the construct, leaving him in the now rather plain blue outfit. He was rather quiet as they ate, taking in the sights and sounds of the lunchroom, not really noticing the eyes that were likely upon his rather bulky frame (he probably dwarfed all but a small fraction of the other students there).

When Kimber spoke up, he frowned in thought. He spoke quietly, surprisingly so, even.

"Hm. That's...suspect. Makes me wonder if this place tends to attract more shapeshifters? Wish we could cross-reference the roster, powers, other possible incidents, that sort of thing. I mean, maybe it's mostly what the headmaster here told the Headmaster. But I'm not sure I want to take things at face value, either."

[Electra]

Koshiro hadn't been aware this was going to turn into an overnight visit, and he wasn't exactly thrilled about it. The kids at this school were weird, even compared to the weirdos at Claremont, and unlike all his classmates, he needed to change clothes and couldn't just make new ones out of nothing when he felt like it. At least his shoulder had mostly stopped hurting. The medic had told him he was lucky just to get winged, but somehow that didn't seem particularly fortunate to him. Annoyed with the world, he slouched at a table in the back of the cafeteria and picked at his food, wishing heartily that he'd gotten to hit Orion and his jackass buddies with a much harder origami fist.

"Villain school," he muttered under his breath at Kimber and Cobalt Templar's suppositions. "Maybe they're putting something in the food." He pushed away his plate and looked around suspiciously for signs that they were being watched.

[Fox]

Wraith frowned a little - something she was getting better at in alien form, though the general lack of facial features still made that a challenge - and privately wondered whether there was a way to disappear without suspicion and go spy on people from vents or crawlspaces. There was chatter around, but she was having trouble getting much solid out of it. "What?" she asked Koshiro, distracted, and then blinked her three black eyes. "Oh, yes. Poisons...I had forgotten those are such a problem. The reaction here does seem somewhat...odd, I think. I feel like there are too many things we do not know."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Their security's good," muttered Sharl when he joined the others, still tapping away at his tablet like any other computer nerd. "Claremont good." He wasn't eating either, but he had his own reasons for that. "They don't bother to lock the student accounts down, though. Stupid. Miss Americana would..." He shook his head, then showed the recordings he'd found to the others. "It looks like transformation's on the menu here, whether or not the students themselves know it." He folded his hands before his face the way Miss Americana did sometimes when she was especially deep in thought. He missed the days when he could just send text messages directly to the brains of all his colleagues. "Barring us having the good luck to see someone warp like that, I think we need to get inside that special dorm," he suggested. "See the people that can't function around the others."

[Gizmo]

"Well hey, I mean, we don't know they're evil yet," Kimber protested half-heartedly at Koshiro's surly indictment, wringing her hands unconsciously and giving the food she hadn't paid much heed to a second glance. "Wraith's right, we don't know enough about what's going on, beisdes that's it's kinda... ick." The whole idea of sinister intentions lurking behind the school's relatively normal facade was still making her uneasy; the thought that the staff there really were acting against their students best interests was extremely unsettling. When Sharl suggested a specific plan of action, however, the translucent blue girl visibly brightened. "Well gee, if only we knew somebody who could turn invisible and walk through walls, eh?" Any subtlety in her whispered statement was likely lost in the way she wiggled her eyebrows up and down over her domino mask.

[trollthumper]

It wasn't hard to slip away from the dining room, especially when Kimber went from merely being lost among the crowd of students to wholly invisible. From there, it was a quick flight across campus to the specialty dormitory. For the most part, it appeared as Collins had described it during the tour - this was a ward for students who had difficulty controlling high-yield powers. Whereas Claremont made regular use of power inhibitors, it was clear that Dunwich didn't have the same clout to ensure the regular supply of such devices - or perhaps the powers had overwhelmed standard issue nullifiers.

The rooms were a cavalcade of powers on the rampage. In one room, Kimber glanced in on a male student, maybe 16, sitting at a steel desk wearing a full suit of morphic molecule clothing that looked it had come straight from the Atom Family's closet. He was working at one of those heavy-duty laptops that contractors carried around dig sites, the kind of thing that could take punishment. As she watched, the air around him began to shimmer with heat, and not a few minutes later, a column of flame erupted in his seat. The response was instantaneous -- the door locked, and a white gas streamed into the room through the vents. Within seconds, the fire was extinguished, and the teenager was back to his normal self, if slightly giddy.

Another room featured a young girl sitting on her bed, reading a book of poetry by Blake, likely for an assignment. Everything around her, however, appeared bolted, strapped, or otherwise affixed to the floor by some high-strength apparatus. It was clear why after half a minute - certain objects around her began bucking and struggling against their confines, as if trying to take flight. Kimber had done this a few times before during her "not herself" stage - random, uncontrolled bursts of telekinesis. Eventually, the attempted maelstrom settled down, the girl's eyes not leaving her book once during the chaos.

Most of the dorm was like that, with each room specially tailored to keep out-of-control powers in check. That was the main floors, however, the real living area. The one place she hadn't explored yet was the basement. She made her way towards the door on the first floor --

-- and found herself pressing flat against it. No matter what she did, the wood wouldn't yield. It felt more solid than solid, if that was the best way to put it. No big deal. She'd simply go through the floor, and --

Now that was odd. Why did the floor feel so solid, too...?

[Gizmo]

Floating along, invisible and immaterial to the world likely should have seemed more disconcerting, but it barely registered to Ghost Girl as anything unusual for all the thought she gave it. The wildly telekinetic girl elicited a pang of sympathy from the unseen observer, who lingered for a few moments to surreptitiously use her own modest abilities to tidy up the fortunately few loose odds and ends that had been thrown about.

The next few dormitories did little more than confirm what they'd already been told to expect, and Kimber wasn't honestly paying much attention when she passed through the wall and into the room of the young man in the morphic molecule outfit, musing as she was on what might be hidden beneath the surface. When he erupted in a column of flame, however, all distractions were roasted out her mind along with any rational thought by white-hot terror. Even without the need to breath, the phantom's throat seized up on her as she threw her invisible arms up in front of her face and rocketed blindly backward through the walls and shelves and doors until she smacked painfully against the inexplicably impassible portal to the basement. Curling up upon herself, the ghost fought to stop shaking as she pushed her immaterial form futilely into the corner of the hallway.

Anyone observing the scene through the amble security cameras would have noticed a sudden onset of bouts of static followed by cracking lenses as the temperature in Dunwich dormitory plummeted below freezing in the span of seconds.

[Avenger Assembled]

"She's panicking about something," murmured Sharl, watching through the security cameras on his tablet as he sat in the middle of the little group of Young Freedom students, having quietly narrated what he'd been able to see of Kimber's explorations to the rest of them. "Something bad is happening, she's running, she's freezing the building. I..." He hesitated just a moment as his fingers began flying over the keys, his voice a firm murmur. "You guys need to be ready to get over there and help her or something, because I'm about to give her a really big distraction in five, four, three..." Sharl's fingers flew over the keys very fast, and suddenly the lights began to flicker and dim, first in the cafeteria, then the building, then across the entire campus. "Rerouting local power grid directly into school's systems," he muttered, fingers still working. "Won't last forever..."

[trollthumper]

The cafeteria didn't so much plunge into darkness as trickle into it, but once the light fell entirely, the response was instantaneous. Some students had their cell phones out, trying to shed some light on their surroundings. Others, more prepared, had flashlights out. The room was a rush of babble, as students kept whispering at one another about what could be at the heart of the outage.

"Please remain calm!"

Over the babble came the shout of Headmaster Collins. "This is likely just a minor outage," she said, maintaining her composure at all times. "We'll try to get the generators on as soon as we can -- if we even need to. Until then, may I have the class heads up front? I would like you to lead the students back to the dorms..."

As Collins instructed her students on proper procedure, Summers spoke over the headpieces. "I know Collins paid her power bills," he said, "and the local grid is stable enough to prevent something like this, and my phone's showing no stories on a large-scale blackout. So I'm guessing this is your work. Go find Kimber."

[Fox]

Wraith didn't need to be told twice. With her teammate - and friend - in trouble, she was gone. She didn't even bother trying to stealth her way through the milling students: in the space between the room going dark and the students trying to provide their own light she was up to the ceiling, a scuttling, flowing ghost of a form making its way after Kimber by any surface that'd hold her weight and any crack that'd let her through (which, formless as she could be, was most cracks). She wasn't sure what to expect, but if it was hostile, she was pretty sure it wouldn't expect her.

[KnightDisciple]

Before the power flickered, Cobalt Templar was starting to tense a bit. One of his teammates was panicking, alone in unfamiliar, possibly hostile, territory. There was no telling what danger she might potentially face. Then Ctizen started the ball rolling. He nodded first to the digital teen, then to Wraith, acknowledging their spoken or unspoken plans.

When the lights started to flicker, there was a space of about 3 seconds where they were off. When the lights were back, he was no longer clad in his "casual" costume, and was instead once more in his not-quite-ethereal blue armor. He was standing, and after the next flicker was about to move to the door.

"Stay close. Eyes and ears sharp. We protect our own."

His face and voice were deadly serious, and he was making long, powerful strides to the door, expecting the others to follow. He didn't need to shed light, his eyes faintly glowing a soft blue color, and the shadows were as bright as day to him. His goal was to get to Ghost Girl and get her safe. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

[Electra]

When Kimber had announced her intention to go haring off, Koshiro was about to speak up, but by the time his mouth was open, it was already too late. He frowned as the news got worse and worse, then jumped when all the power went. "What are we supposed to do?" he asked everyone and no one. Even if they could find her, they could hardly just pick her up and carry her out of the building or whatever. Maybe if something or someone was threatening her they could beat it up, but that was about it. He was relieved (for all he'd never show it) when Corbin jumped to his feet. At least somebody seemed to know what to do. Shoving aside his tray, Koshiro got up and followed the big glowing guy towards the exit.

[Avenger Assembled]

For his own part, Sharl was in something of a bind. The electronic teenager couldn't just leave his work behind, not when constantly rerouting power from the local grid was taking up all his attention. He'd seen how resilient the local systems were, if he took his eyes off this, especially if he stopped dumping excess power into the 'special requirements' dorm, Ghost Girl would be in serious trouble: heck, if he did it inattentively, he might overload one of the key systems he'd seen like the halogen fire extinguisher room or the psi-nullifiers and make the problem much bigger than any of them could handle. If he took it with him, though, his obvious focus on it would probably make the departure of the rest of the team all the more conspicuous: and they certainly didn't need more attention drawn to them when they were trying to be stealthy. Not wanting to leave them in a bind, though, he did eventually get up and leave, albeit slowly, walking right through the half-open door as if he was a particularly callow youth playing an exceptionally interesting video game.

[April]

As her teammates raced from the cafeteria to locate and assist Kimber, Sage opted to remain near the Headmaster's to provide them with a watchful--if stealthy--guard. So from her place in the shadows, the senior stealthy member of Young Freedom kept a careful eye on the students in the cafeteria while extending her mental senses to make contact with Kimber's mind.

The ghost girl's mind felt strange to the teen telepath, as if it were a faint echo that the more 'solid' impressive the mindwalker normally felt around the girl, but even so it was just barely enough to make tenuous contact. -Kimber,- Sage projected, her mental voice quiet and reassuring, -you must calm yourself. Do not let your fear control you.-

[Gizmo]

Kimber's thoughts reached across the distance to Eve's mind as though the telepath was hearing them from the far end of a massive echoing chamber. At first they were disjointed and inarticulate, a deluge of panic that came from all sides that faded in and out like a crashing tide. Eventually they took on enough definition to be intelligible is only just. --burninghelpfirehotnoscortchseargetawayflamepainbadnonono-- After long moments of the telepathic equivalent of hyperventilating, the phantom's thoughts became more ordered as Sage's reassurance reached her. --E-eve? I... There was so much fire, so close, burn me to nothing, ashes...!-- There was a stuttering gasp of will, then a steadier, --Calm. Right. I'll try...--

[trollthumper]

The group, minus Sage, entered the dorm just as easily as Kimber had - with security informed about the power outages, they were likely patrolling the floors, checking on the students and making sure they were okay. They traced her through the chill; Kimber was regaining her sense of composure, but the floor was still close to freezing around her. She was still invisible, so it was hard to precisely track her, but the group had a very good idea of where she was.

The lights in the dorm were flickering - obviously Sharl's work - but the integral systems were still online, preventing potential catastrophe. Still, it made the lower hall a dark and somewhat hectic place. But it was dark enough that Indira could detect something she likely wouldn't have in full light - a faint, barely perceptible glow around the door Kimber had settled near, forming almost microscopic script in a language she didn't recognize.

[Fox]

Wraith relaxed - some - when it was apparent that her friend was more afraid than hurt, and not in any clear danger. At least, she assumed Kimber wasn't hurt; the alien's three big black eyes picked up a lot more of the spectrum than a human's, but she was pretty sure that there wasn't a part of the spectrum that her ghostly roommate couldn't hide from.

Though, on the note of the spectrum, those three big black eyes blinked, head stretching down a bit from the rest of her body (which was still partway up the wall, and gathering a little bit of frost when she wasn't moving). "Ghost Girl?" she asked, carefully, to the general area in front of the door. "Are you okay? There...is something very odd about the door, here. I do not know where you are, but I do not know if it is a good idea to touch it."

[Gizmo]

The corporeal teenagers heard a faint sniffling before they saw their spectral teammate fade slowly into view, hugging her knees with one arm and wiping her eyes with the back of the reaper's cloak sleeve covering the other. "H-hey guys. Sorry," she managed quietly, still visibly trembling but seeming more ashamed now than terrified. "There... there was a fire, and... I'm okay now." Her assurances weren't very convincing as she carefully straightened and rose to float just slightly off of the floor, lifting her head just enough to reveal tracks of slightly darker blue left by ghostly tears running over beryl freckles over her domino mask and beneath her hood. "Sorry, sorry," she mumbled again, not meeting anyone's eyes as she gestured to the door behind her. "Then I ran into this, and... I guess it's ghost-proof." Making a fist, she thumped it against the barrier, her translucent flesh refusing to pass through.

[KnightDisciple]

Corbin was concerned about the odd door. A janitor's closet kept Kimber out? That wasn't normal. But right this moment, he was more concerned about a friend and teammate. His armored body glowed for a moment, and he was clad in his cloth costume from when they arrived, a faint glow about his body still present.

Then, suddenly, he stepped over, reached down a bit, and gave Kimber a big, fierce, brotherly hug. A hug she could actually feel, as his arms didn't pass through her body. Despite the harsh flames his powers often manifested, there was no scorching heat in this hug. Just an ever-so-slight warmth, like a nice blanket on a winter day. He held the embrace for a few seconds before letting go, taking a step back. He gave the spectral member of his team a soft smile.

"Nothing to be ashamed of, Kimber. It's alright, and besides, your friends are here to back you up now."

He turned to the door as she knocked on it, frowning. Somewhere in the motion he was in his more menacing armor plating again.

"Hm. Should we try opening it like normal? I mean, sure, we could bust it down, but that seems like a bad idea right now..."

[Electra]

Koshiro stood by as the other teens attempted to comfort Kimber. Honestly, he didn't know her well enough to even know what to say, besides "sorry you got reminded of your death by that guy catching on fire" or something totally stupid like that. Luckily, the others were doing a pretty good job without him. Rather than continuing to feel useless just standing there, he jumped on the chance for action. "Here," he told Corbin. "I got it."

Reaching into his bag, he pulled out a cardboard box lined with tissue paper. From inside, he withdrew a small figure, no larger than his hand from wrist to fingertip, that was nonetheless a perfectly-formed paper soldier. It had taken hours to make the intricate origami design, even working from a crease pattern, but having something with hands and eyes seemed like a wise precaution to take. He set the figure on the ground, where it stood for a moment before growing, just like Koshiro's planes did. It reached the height of a normal man within seconds, then made a slight rustling noise as it stepped forward and tested the door. The handle stuck for a moment, then opened with a firmer hand. The soldier stepped forward into the strange room, Papercut behind it.

[trollthumper]

The paper soldier ran one thin hand through the crack in the door. To Indira's sight, the tiny writing along the side flared for one second, then extinguished itself. The door, despite appearances, did not open to a janitor's closet, but to a well-lit staircase. The paper soldier led the way down, with Koshiro following closely.

The soldier saw the room beneath first. It looked like a basement that had undergone some massive upkeep - polished stone walls, barely any furnishings. The power was on, and unadulterated despite Sharl's best efforts - odds were the room ran on its own generator. The first thing that caught Koshiro's attention were the gigantic steel vats in the back. They looked like brewery equipment, but the scent of fresh cream wafted off of them. Though there were strange notes underneath it - something sickly sweet, and alkaline as well.

In the back, built into the wall, was a small cell. Unlike the dorms above, it was clear, rigid plexiglass all around, allowing no chance for privacy. There were no beds, and no other furniture of any kind - just symbols carved onto the walls, and into the very floor. Around the carvings on the floor were white traces that smelled much like the stuff in the vats.

[Gizmo]

Kimber let out a surprised sound at Corbin's bear hug, about as disconcerted by so many things being solid in relation to her that day as a living person would have been by repeated bouts of insubstantiality. The intent behind the gesture drowned out any unease quickly enough, however, and by the time the broad-shouldered teen took a step back, the poltergeist was able to muster up a small smile and nod for him in return. "Thanks," she replied in a soft voice before making a small show of tugging her costume straight and composing herself. The tear stains on her face fade as if of their own accord and the shadows cast by her cloak's hood over her face deepened with little regard for the actual lighting in the hallway. Setting her slender, translucent jaw, she resolved to make up for her panic attack.

With that firmly in mind, she followed quickly after Koshiro and his paper solider, floating high enough in the air to put her eye-level a few heads over even Corbin, the tattered edges of her reaper's garb fluttering about her feet. She was a little more wary of the symbols carved all about them given the way the door had managed to affect her combined with Indira's earlier warnings. Something very odd was obviously going on and judging by the attempts to conceal it, it wasn't a good sort of odd at all. Even so, most of her attention was on the plexiglass cell, as she glided silently forward to get a better look inside.