The man raises an eyebrow at Janice. "Outing someone else's real name is considered a major social blunder." He comments idly, then walks over to a dead tree. Reaching down, he grabs the base with both hands and straightens, tearing it out of the ground by the roots. Then he tosses it over the building and into the jungle behind it, the sounds of trees impacting with the dead wood echoing over the top of the building. "Nah, I cause gridlock by turning the road into gravel."
"Okay, well... if that's how we're doing names, I guess I'm Pixie." She shrugged; it was good enough for now.
Bolt rubs her head, after watching Gridlock.
"Pixie, just to be clear, you can give your own name if you want. But it's only when you trust people to have it. We're all different people, and we're all from different worlds, but we're all hunted by the same people. So a little caution at first is probably called for." She turns to Gridlock. "You know, caution? Like not tossing trees around without making sure nobody has snuck onto the property?"
Well, I'm Chess... - he says, still shy and confused - ... And I have no clue if I have any powers at all. I had in the past... But the fact we're all still having a conversation without everybody getting sick and dying, I guess I lost it. I'm glad... I hope it's for good! I don't miss that... Curse... At all...
He shakes with the chills.
However, if I can be useful... Powers or not... Count with me! - and he completed with a smile.
"You have something, Shadow Priest said you survived a direct hit from Reaper's sonic axe, and there's nothing human that can." Bolt says. "We just need to see if we can get them to show up." She rubs her lip thoughtfully. "We could try something..."
She vanishes, and a red blur whirls around Chess.
None of the blows do any damage, but Chess feels like he's in a whirlwind of fists.
"Hmm. Got it, and my bad."
"So... do you have a name for your organization, or this training camp—or reading materials, some sort of orientation pamphlet we should start with?"
"Pamphlets for a secret metahuman training facility?" Kiran scoffed, "Designed by whom? Printed and shipped from where?"
Grid shakes his head. "Hey, more than I got. I got dumped in an old bomb shelter with 4 strangers, and asked to keep an eye on St. Louis and keep it from blowing up."
Bolt frowns. "You're the first group, well, one of the first groups, we've had enough of an organization to actually do some training. The other team is taking a very.. organized approach. Grid and I are going to take a more organic approach. Basically, we'll try to teach you what we know, but neither of us were teachers or military or anything like that. So, basically, we're going to try to help you figure out what you can do, and then try to train you to not get killed. I suspect there will be a lot of beating on you to get you used to it."
Well... That didn't hurt. But, then again, maybe it did... I'm not quite fully aware of myself nowadays! Maybe I'm just resistant to damage?
He laughed openly and cheerfully.
... Or maybe it will hurt later on when I go to bed! I have a feeling you could hurt me so that even my breath would get me bent in pain.
Punching Bag Boy is 6 feet tall and 180 pounds, with a lean and muscular build. He wears his brown hair short and unkempt for easy maintenance. He has light brown eyes that appear golden in certain light. His wardrobe is typical American student: veteran jeans, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and sneakers. The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind getting him to this South African resort. He does not believe in many of things that he has heard, but one thing is clear: people are being hunted, and the hunters must be stopped. The Force has led to him this point, and he listens.
He nods to Janice when she recognizes him but does not volunteer his name. He lets the conversation drift away from him, while he ponders how to introduce himself.
Finally there’s a comfortable pause in the conversation, so he clears his throat and says, ”I suppose you could call me a Jedi, instead of Punching Bag Boy. I have black belts in Karate and Tae Kwon Do and follow the Jedi Code. I don’t think I am a Metahuman, but what people are doing to you is wrong. So, I want to help you if I can.”
"Jedi? Seriously? Oh my god, he's a nerd." She giggles to herself, not talking to anyone in particular.
Jack arches an eyebrow and replies with a smile, "Well, it's a good thing nerds aren't hunted like metahumans."
"Hunted? Oh, no, just socially degraded and physically abused by the Privileged Jocks..." Kiran muttered half jokingly. She'd seen a few of her friends in the drama club get their fair share of flak.
Bolt shakes her head. "Kid, Jedi's are movies, just like the Avengers are comics, and Star Trek Aliens are movies. I'll grant you our powers may be similar, but we're metahumans. Our powers come from genetics, somehow. We just can't figure out how yet. We have DNA samples from people both before and after their powers engage, and the DNA is different. We don't know how that's happening, but the DNA has expressed somehow. Our best guess, and it's just that, is that there's a specific gene we haven't identified yet that causes our RNA to rewrite our DNA. But tracking it down is hard, we don't have enough before and after samples."
Turning back to the group, Bolt continues. "We are all hunted by various groups, there are some research facilities that will pay for one of us, no questions asked. The government wants us, we've heard rumors of paramilitary groups, terrorist groups, and other unsavory types hunting us. Then there are people who think we are abominations, demons, aliens, and just about anything under the sun or that hides from it."
Kiran glances at her arachnoid legs as Bolt mentions abominations and demons and gives a sullen click of her mandibles. "And we're here to get a handle on this... Us... So we don't hurt anybody?"
Chess kept his silence at the moment. He still didn't quite understand where he could be useful, but he was glad he wasn't killing everybody in the room anymore.
"Whoa, there," Janice asks, suddenly with more energy, "You have a sequencer? Can I use it, once we're done with this training?"
Gridlock nods. "That's part of it, I had a lot of trouble learning to control. I can rip the door off a car like it was tissue paper, imagine what I can do to a person shaking their hand." He pauses, letting that sink in. "Some of us are lucky, we don't have to worry about accidentally killing those around us. Some of us have to learn not to, and that takes effort, and training. Unfortunately, there are those of us out there that don't care, or actually enjoy hurting others. The police aren't trained to take them on. Security guards aren't either. Normal people who try die, and usually fast and hard. The government is more interested in covering it up and using us for experiments than stopping it. That worked... for awhile. But, there's more and more of us every day. Last estimate is, maybe, 1 in 10,000 people. So, around 7 million of us around the world. When I first got recruited, it was maybe 700,000 thousand, and that was 5 years ago. Who knows how many it will be in 5 years. One of these days, something big will happen that can't be covered up. We hope to be in a position then to go public, and have stable, trained, people ready to show we aren't all dangerous and needing to be killed or imprisoned. You know how people are about things they don't understand. If we can't show that, there'll be bounties, military involvement... And we won't win. There's people out there that think we will, that think they can take over the world. But it won't happen."
"Whoa, there," Janice asks, suddenly with more energy, "You have a sequencer? Can I use it, once we're done with this training?"
Bolt blinks, and actually tints red a bit. "Uhm, not exactly... we have a, uh, a specialist who doesn't really need electronics to analyze... biology..."
"7 million? Growing exponentially?" Jack repeats incredulously adding to the many things that he is struggling to digest.
Faye doesn't even listen to Gridlock's lecture, she just groans internally. This is gonna suuuuuck.
The next two weeks pass quickly. The days are spent in the secluded courtyard, cleaning, using powers to do so, or just pushing a shovel and wheelbarrel around.
In between cleaning up, Bolt and Gridlock show off a lot of powers, and also talk about how to use the powers the group has.
Pixie, for example, is an excellent scout and infiltrator, and when trying to track down someone dangerous, that is invaluable.
Janice is a dabbler of many abilities, but a master of none. She will be useful in a many situations, but must remember that she will be hard pressed to take on any specialist at their given specialty.
Jack can pass for a normal human, but he has to remember that his abilities are all based on his perception, and that he is completely vulnerable if knocked out. And that his persuasive abilities have their limits, and the more information he has about his targets the more likely he is to not make a mistake, such as demanding ID from a villain.
Drider's carapace is strong and hard, and gives her high defenses, and her reflexes are hightened.
Chess... they are not sure on, and need to help him work harder to find out what he can do.
Over the course of training, they get a good idea for how fast everyone can move, and how tough they are, as Bolt rapid-fire punches people, over and over, from love taps to full on right crosses, until they figure out what their limits are.
In general, the defensive abilities are fairly similar, Chess, Kiran and Jack are roughly similar in how much damage they can withstand. Faye is both stronger and weaker, her body is much more resistant to low speed high mass impact contacts than others, but less resistant to high speed low mass impacts. Janice varies widely depending on which form she's in, but is generally weaker than the others. Her rapidly shifting body gives her greater flexibility and power, but makes it correspondingly harder for her body to defend itself.
-----------------------
One demonstration that does stick out in their minds during the training....
Gridlock carries an abandoned car into the courtyard. It's been freshly cleaned, and the fancy tiles glint in the sun. He drops the car down on what used to be the restaurant patio.
While he's doing that, Bolt assembles a large box made of bullet proof glass, two layers of it.
Then, once the recruits are behind the glass, she begins the lecture. "So, this is an H&K UMP .45. For those who aren't in the know, it means it's a sub machine gun that fires .45 caliber rounds." She points it toward the car, and pulls the trigger. Her hand blurs as she moves back and forth, and bullets pepper the car from bumper to bumper, shattering windows and leaving holes in it. "It is very popular among paramilitary groups, and drug runners. Also with certain government response teams and SWAT teams. It packs a punch, and can take down a man with only a hit or two." She continues, replacing the clip and resetting the slide. Then she turns and points it at Gridlock, and empties the clip into him.
Gridlock grunts as the rounds hit him, and eventually goes down on one knee. When the gun clicks empty though, he slowly stands back up, bits of lead falling off his body as he flexes, the clip flattened out against his body. "Most of you could survive a burst from this with nothing more than bruises and sore muscles. You'll get shot, eventually, be it by crooks or people trying to put you in a lab to take samples. After it happens a few times, you'll get blase about it, and ignore people with weapons like these." She replaces the clip, and then turns and fires a burst at Gridlock again.
This time, Gridlock jerks as he's hit, blood splatters, and he falls over on his back. "The first two clips had what are called dum dum rounds, just blobs of lead. These are armor piercing rounds." She turns and unloads them on the car, and this time the rounds go through the car and hit the concrete wall behind it. "Now, can anyone tell the difference just looking at this gun? Remember, always respect a weapon. And all Metas are weapons, whether they want to be or not. Always assume a Meta can hurt you, never take it for granted. That's not saying don't be friendly, that's not saying fear them, that's saying respect them. Don't fear the gun, respect it. Don't fear what you are, or what others are, respect it."
Gridlock groans, and pushes his way to his feet. His body is slowly healing, the bullets pushing out and falling to the ground. "And don't volunteer for one of Bolt's demonstrations without asking what she's going to shoot you with."
At some point later in the training, Janice approaches the car in the courtyard, wearing the loosest clothing she can find. Standing in the sun, she waits, staring at her arms as they swell and widen, becoming little more than tree trunks, dangling at the elbows and shoulders from green muscles and bundles of vines. Her bare feet push into the dirt as they get larger, ringed with spirals of bark and hardened, impossibly dense wood; her toes splay into balancing roots, splayed out over a foot apart, and when she finally lifts one foot it makes a creaking sound like a tree being torn from the ground. Her torso widens, barrel-shaped but with a muscle-like patterning; her face becomes enclosed in a wooden dome, eyes looking out from behind bark-lined tunnels.
Straining, she lifts up one end of the car, then pulls the whole thing towards her and hoists it over her head; as she holds it there for over a minute, lifting the weight seems to get easier rather than harder, as her cells struggle and find new ways to increase strength and density, her feet sinking nearly a foot into the ground from the weight. Finally, she steps forward and flings the car into an empty portion of the courtyard, and it tumbles nearly 30 feet through the air before bouncing three times and coming to a stop.
The second time she tries to lift a car, it comes almost instantly, her cells simply remembering their previous configuration.
* * *
For the rest of training, Janice is most interested in mobility and speed, things she would have the most trouble practicing in front of a mirror. On the first day, she can run a seven-minute mile; by the last, she can do it in four, sprinting at Olympic-qualifying speed (and running with respectable speed even in tree form). By streamlining her body through progressive cycles of trial and error, she is able to more than double her jumping distance; at the end of training, she can leap 30 feet straight up into the air—and not come back down, though she’s hesitant to fly higher for fear of showing up on radar. By swinging her arms in a controlled fashion, she can force them to elongate into heavy vines nearly 60 feet long, and after practicing with increasing distance she is eventually able to grab items accurately at half that range.
During the two weeks, it is clear to you that Jedi has been training to use his powers for years. With Bolt and Gridlock, he is an eager student learning as much from them and their experience as possible. When left to themselves, he resumes a specific regime that reminds anyone who remembers Episode V Empire Strikes Back of Luke's training with Yoda. He runs, jumps, and flips around the courtyard. He proves as fast as Snapdragon running in her fastest forms.
In addition, he practices martial arts forms. He spars with Bolt, Gridlock, and anyone else, while wearing a blindfold some times. He's not as good without his sight, but he is certainly not blind.
Once a day, he spends some time at the demonstration car. He concentrates and holds his hand out to it. It rattles but does not move.
During downtime, Jedi keeps to himself unless approached. He appears very comfortable with the situation and enjoys the change in scenery. He takes time to watch the sunrise and sunset within the boundaries of the resort. Occasionally, you will see him use his Telekinesis to toggle light switches, change channels without a remote control, or bring something from across the room to him. Again he must concentrate, but he is confident of the results.
As the days pass, as much as the others seem to find new and exciting powers they’re capable of using, the same can’t be said about Chess. Most of the time the boy just moves around helping clean the place or organize it, sometimes bringing water or snacks to the others and admiring their capabilities.
He also spends some time meditating and looking to the starred sky. Whoever gets close to him is able to hear him “talking to himself” – the process is extenuating, and it sounds as if two people are talking to each other. In actuality, his dual mind is trying to understand everything and process in such way the two entities can live together.
Tien – the Metahuman Chinese boy whose body is the physical representation of Chess – tries to explain to his counterpart about Human habits and culture, from the silliest things (like comic books and science fiction) to the most complicate things he understands (like different languages). Even concepts as feeding and sleeping sound a little strange sometimes. Aahq – the extradimensional alien merged to to Tien – by other side, tries to give the earthling an idea of time and space, of relativity and high complex mathematics.
They also spend some time explaining each other their previous powers. Tien didn’t quite understand his, but it had something to do with radiation, and he considered it more a curse than a power. People were always getting sick and dying around him. Aahq had a much better understanding of his extremely vast powers, but they were so outworldly complex to explain to Tien and got so terribly corrupted by the circumstances that brought Aahq to Earth, that there was only a single way to explain.
Chess.
Aahq told Tien that everything and everybody had positions in time and space, and such positions could be simply different depending of the angle the targets are being looked at. More than that, with the right understanding, someone with enough power could move the pieces (as the game pieces are moved) – and from this “simple yet complex” concept, his race got their name: Rearrangers.
Nevertheless, they both were still clueless on what their new existence was capable of. It seems clear that none of the previous powers was there, yet their logical assumption is that a merged subset was the most probable option.
Chess liked both the instructors. Although his constant smiling and humility could be annoying sometimes, he felt as if they somehow enjoyed his presence as well, but were feeling frustrated with the fact no one could figure out what he could actually do – besides being somewhat resistant to damage and very strange looking. He definitely could still pass as Human – especially using a pair of sunglasses – but would still be noticeable.
A certain night, Bolt came in with an actual Chess board to play with the kid. As some sort of joke, obviously, and everybody laughed a little bit about it. Why not? They sat down and played, for hours. Gridlock didn’t seem to have enough patience to play, but sometimes he’d stop and look at it.
Nights passed and the games continued. During such, they’d speak about the most varied subjects – and the student would hear about the most varied powers his instructors ever were exposed to, in the hopes that something could ring a bell. Some were too dangerous to try; nevertheless, none of them worked. Things seem hopeless.
It was on a Thursday night, after the game, that Bolt stood up tired. She looked at him, blinking slowly.
- You cheated! There’s not where the Tower was. – she said, austere face, and then immediately burst out laughing and left the room.
Chess looked at her leaving, confused. He thought the mate was fair and square. He downed his eyes and looked at the board, trying to spot what was wrong. And then, suddenly, the pieces appeared in a different position. No magical effect, no smoke, and no bolt of light – they just appeared in a different position, as if they had been there the entire time.
His eyes opened wide.
Pixie surprised even herself by how quickly she managed to convince the instructors that Hide & Seek qualified as valuable stealth training. Of course, even if they disagreed, there wasn't much they could do to stop her. In fact, she'd gotten so good at hiding that she'd taken to napping in the vents.
"Kid," Janice approaches Chess a day or two later, "I hear you can teleport things, but it's still subconscious. If you really want to test this, we could try a controlled drop—Drider or I climbs up the side of one of those towers, catches you just before you hit the ground, with the other one below for extra safety in case you can't jump away."
Jedi will volunteer to play hide and seek with Pixie attempting to use the Force to find her.
Always up for a challenge, Pixie is more than eager to agree.
"Okay! I'll go easy on you for now. I'll go invisible and fly around, and you win if you can touch me."
Drider had a rather general idea of what she was capable of with her mutations, and doubted she'd find out anything drastically new over the course of the few weeks. Still, She had come with the intention of learning more about her new form, and she'd need to test her limits to figure that out.
Seeing the others using the car for practice, she tried it herself. She was vastly stronger than before her transformation, but she'd never been able to gauge it properly in her self-imposed exile. She braced her spider limbs firmly in the ground as she grabbed the car by the undercarriage. With a trying grunt, she was able to force the car onto it's passenger side wheels, get a better grip and pull it off the ground completely before clumsily dropping it again, springing out of the way with the help of her four anchored legs.
She left any further physical honing to the drills and combat conditioning Bolt and Gridlock ran them through, focusing the rest of her own experimenting time on her webbing. It wasn't difficult to quickly generate enough silk to seal a door or block a hallway, but it was otherwise inelegant to do quickly. She spent a fair amount of time practicing quick webbing targets, before pinning down a few effective techniques.
Each of her limbs and mandibles were capable of producing silk, but each seemed to do so in its own specialized way. Spitting the webbing from her mandibles created a wide enough spread that would wrap around targets and encase them rather effectively, while the top pair of her spider limbs seemed more adept at concentrated bursts, either creating a tether to pull and leash targets, or in dense shots similar to high velocity, non-lethal beanbag shots.
Her bottom pair of limbs weren't as easily weaponized, but were dexterous enough to spin and weave the silk with little concentration, a talent Drider often used to stave off boredom and keep productive on creating a stockpile of fabric. Every night, roughly an hour after everyone had turned in for the night, she'd wake up, restless and fall into her tailoring, the mere act of doing something, anything productive easing her mind more than sleep itself.
Once Chess found out a little more of what he could do, with the help of Bolt and Janice, it almost immediately hit him. Everything instantly made sense - in a different way to each of his minds, but still so perfectly connected that he could control his powers with incredible ease.
Thanks, Janice! Er... Snapdragon. Thanks! Let's try something like that!
As he was speaking, he appeared behind her. His eyes were now red - the effect of using the power was quite obvious. Yet, the teleportation was so fast and unexpected that could be disconcerting to some people.
We just love doing it! I mean... I just love doing it. But you should be careful.
On the second after, he switched both his and Janice's position, moved them both to the hall on the side, and he appeared bowing in front of her. The effect again was quite obvious - and he seemed to get tired the more he did it.
I wouldn't want anyone to get hurt! - he completed, smiling cheerfully.
"Well, that's... different" Janice remarks, though at this point she's already been teleported a few times, and thus realizes and recovers from it almost immediately, remembering, "And where did you learn my first name?"
Pixie goes invisible and flutters around the Jedi for a bit, then attempts to tag him.
[dice=""Attack" Roll]3d6[/dice]
Training continues apace for another couple of weeks.
Jack and Pixie spend a lot of time playing hide and seek, and Jack finds that his force sense works if Pixie is stalking him, but not if she just wants to keep away from him. It's not perfect, but works slightly more often than it doesn't.
Chess continues to work on his new found ability to teleport things.
Janice continues to develop her control over her body.
Drider continues to work on controlling her limbs, and also experimenting with her webbing.
After another week, the teachers pull the students together.
"Alright everyone, we're coming up on the end of training. When we're done, we'll be asking you all to relocate to New Orleans. It's a major port city, and there's a lot of weirdness going on in port cities. Not to mention the swamps surrounding it give a lot of wilderness to hide in. Now, you're not required to. Obviously. We have one last 'test', and that's something you need. We'll be bringing in two more people you haven't met, and then we'll be fighting. We'd rather you get your first taste of actual combat in a controlled environment. Now, this isn't going to be the sparring we've been doing. This is full on combat, full contact, and you could get injured. We will have a medical specialist available to ensure no one dies, but it could hurt. This is your last chance to back out, no hard feelings, no guilt. If you decide you don't want to be in situations where you'll have to fight, we'll still help you as much as we can." Bolt explains, and then glances at Pixie. "Also, it's sort of a last test, sometimes powers come out in combat that can't be found any other way. We can't really send defensless people into situations we know are dangerous. If you still want to help, but can't deal with hostile Metas, we can find other things for people to do. So don't feel as if you have to fight. This is strictly for those who feel they can do so, and we feel have a reasonable chance of doing so without being killed outright."
Gridlock coughs. "You'll need to pick someone to be in charge of your team, someone to make decisions if you're split on what to do. Less of an issue with 5 people, but still sometimes you get three way splits, 2, 2, and 1 on what to do. Need someone to make a final decision."
Shimmer arrives the night before the big battle with two newcomers. The first is a young man in a red off-road biker suit, one that's seen better days.
The second is another young man, about the same age, but slightly bigger muscles, with tats on his arms.
"Alright everyone, this is Arachnid and Frag, they'll be joining us for tomorrow's fight. You know mostly what Grid and I can do now, but have no idea what Frag and Arachnid can do. We'll be giving them information on what two of you can do." Bolt says, and then shows some pieces of paper with names on it. Those go into a bag, and she mixes them up before pulling two names out.
Bolt looks at the names. "Snapdragon is able to alter her body, changing it's physical properties. Lets her grow, or fly, or bulk up, or pass for mundane human." She says, nodding at Snapdragon. "Pixie of here has no known attack ability, but is dextrous, tough, and can go invisible for short periods of time."
The man in the bike suit nods. "Gotcha. So, no holds barred? Trinity going to be here to pick up the pieces if someone gets hurt?"
Grid nods. "Yeah, she'll be here before we start."
The man with the tattoo's nods as well. "Good enough."
"Hmm," Snapdragon responds, "If I live twenty miles outside the city, can I commute, or do I need a new apartment? Otherwise I'm game, as long as the hours aren't too bad."
Jack is happy about the city choice, since he's already enrolled in the magnificent Loyola University. The upcoming fight concerns him, not for himself, but for the others. Jack has been sparring for years and is well-practiced taking a hit, but he's not sure about the girls and the Chinese boy.
"Are we going to fight in the courtyard? With someone saying, 'go' or something," Jack asks Bolt and Grilock for clarification. After the answer, Jack suggests, "maybe we should discuss among ourselves before we fight," looking at the girls and Chess, then Bolt and Gridlock for support.
=====================================================================
Jack closes the door and sits down with the other four new recruits. "Alright, there are five of us versus four of them, so we have at least one advantage. Bolt is super fast, so it will be hard to pin her down. I'm sure she will avoid pausing near me, so I can get a clear shot. Gridlock, on the other hand, will be tough. I will need a lucky hit, in order to put him down."
After a comfortable pause, he continues, "so, one tactic would be for Snapdragon or Drider to attempt to stop Bolt long enough for me to get a shot at her. Drider, you might be quick enough to fight Gridlock toe-to-toe, but I don't think any of us is tough enough to survive too many of his hits. Now, Pixie and Chess, how do you think you can put one of them unconscious or set one of us up? What other ideas does everyone have?" He looks at everyone hoping for some ideas before the fight.
"Well, there is one other thing I can try... I can create this sort of powder thing... it's like an itching powder, I guess? I haven't mentioned it to anyone, in case I got a chance to pull a prank on somebody with it, but it might be useful for, like, distraction or something."
"Alright. That's good. Focus on Gridlock, because I don't think you can catch Bolt." Jedi encouragingly replies. But he's concerned that it will have no real effect on the brick.
"Err... am I going high, or low? And none of us is nearly as fast as Bolt, but I'm pretty sure Drider and I can hit just as hard as you, so asking us to hold while you punch sounds counterproductive; and we should probably focus on knocking out who we think will actually hit hardest. 'Frag' sounds dangerous. Gridlock will take a lot of punches to bring down, and 'hope for a lucky hit' sounds like the worst way to fight him I can think of."
"High or low? I don't know what you mean, Snapdragon. And yes, "hoping for a lucky hit" is one of the worst ways to fight." Jedi smiles and tries again.
"Yes, I agree that you and Drider can hit as hard as me. But you two also have ways of stopping people that I do not. You have your vines, and she has her webs. My point is that we have to find a way to stop Bolt, in order to get her. If you grab her and I hit her, we could potentially knock her out before she wiggles loose. It's about timing and teamwork."
"Frag and Arachnid are both probably dangerous, too. That's why they're here and not captured. If we want to speculate using their codenames, Frag might cause explosions like fragmentation grenades. And, Arachnid might have similar powers to Drider or Spiderman. But, we don't know. What I am suggesting is a tactic to deal with Bolt, while the other two reveal what they can do."
"Chess, could you teleport Gridlock into the air? I don't think he can fly, and he could probably survive falling any distance. If you could teleport him high enough, it might take him out of the fight for awhile and potentially damage him when he lands. Besides Pixie's powder, does anyone have another way to care of Gridlock?"
"In the sky, or on the ground. I don't know whether an aerial view matters here, or if I should just go for defenses."
"And tripping Gridlock repeatedly might work for a while, though I don't know how slow he is. Drider's webs would probably be decent there, though."
"Oh." Jedi finally understands the high or low. "Flying could be an advantage depending on what Frag and Arachnid can do. And repeatedly tripping Gridlock will not work, unless a second person is there to hit him on the ground. I tried that tactic solo against another brick called Tatiana, and she knocked me out."
Jack looks to the other three metas hoping that they will join the brainstorming.
The next morning, Shimmer and a new woman appear, who wears a gray mask. Today, she's also wearing a full body combat suit similar to what one would expect of a SWAT team member to wear. She has two swords on her back, crossed, and moves with an easy assurance of someone who knows not only how to use them, but how to avoid their use.
"For those who haven't met me yet, I'm Sanction." She says, her voice a furry contralto. "I'll be watching today. Don't worry about hitting me, or anything like that. Just assume I'm scenery, I don't want you trying to avoid hitting me or anything. I want to see what you can do." She looks at Bolt. "And that's not an invitation for you to take a free potshot."
Arachnic, Bolt, Frag, and Gridlock all laugh.
Shimmer nods. "Yeah, don't worry about hitting me, I doubt you could except by accident anyway." Then she looks at Bolt. "Well, other than Bolt, of course."
Everyone troops out to the central courtyard park, and Shimmer ports up to the southern roof. Sanction takes a running start and does a respectable athletic flip up onto the roof and takes up a position as well. "Recruits, line up by the interior courtyard wall, within 10 meters of it. Old hats, you start up by the main entryway." She pulls out a box, and pushes a button. "When this beeps.. go..."