Aulter (IC)

[NineOfSpades]

Liz gave a non-committal shrug. “Your guess is as good as mine. I imagined those pixies would just have a magic-healing potion that’d fix you up in no time…whatever we’re dealing with, it’s not an exact science” The sword of healing was actually a funny enough idea that Liz broke off from her work on the exercise gear to quickly sketch a six-inch sword with the word ‘Healing Shiv’ on it. It was rough work, taking only a handful of seconds. She popped it into being and tossed it to Lavender. “You can try your luck with that one”

[Hazuki]

Lavender catches the sword with the sticky end of one of her branches, more comfortable with using it when it won't make Nicoleta uncomfortable. Also, wanting to avoid stabbing her hand when the magic sword of healing is untested. "What won't I miss..." She considers for a few moments, doing a few faux-fencing movements with the tiny implement. Then, she takes the shiv to a lock of her hair that has a few split ends.

[Ramsus]

The very thin, very delicate looking sword shatters against the hair in a shower of white dust, small dusty white pills, and shards of pills.

[Sønderjye]

A portal claws it's way into reality and the lovely smell of dusty tome tickles the senses of those present. Mads, in civilian clothing, steps through. He tilts his head ever so slightly while looking at Lavender pointing the less-than-realistic "sword" towards her head: "What are you guys doing?"

[Hazuki]

"Will you please stop using your powers for everything, Mads?" Lavender asks, as she discards her new handful of pills on the table. "You're like those people who get the latest tech and go around waggling it in everyone's faces. Hey guys, check out my Google Glass, it's totally cool and it can do 3d and I look great and not at all like a complete arse."

[Sønderjye]

Mads looks baffled hearing the outburst, initially decides to brush Lavender's words aside as an angry outburst but eventually decides to consider her.

"No, I won't" he responds calmly. "For one reason I just saved a few bucks from not taking the bus to get here. For another I saved time which I otherwise would have wasted by getting here. And even if none of those were the case I need to practice my precision and I can't do that without using my power. Where is this comming from?" he studies her face trying to figure out whether it's just frustration from being temporarily disabled or if there's something more.

[Hazuki]

"You can do that by teleporting into your own room. And it's coming from you using it for everything, for no reason! You use it to talk to us when you could just walk into the next room! You used it to show Nicoleta something when she was in the same room!" Lavender replies, as she folds her arms over her chest. "It's obnoxious. It disregards privacy - we can't not answer your stupid face appearing, like with a phone. And it makes the room smell like mildew."

[Sønderjye]

"Ehm." Mads still looks bewildered: "Are you saying that I have intruded your privacy by making a portal to the main room or that me practicing and being efficient with my time is obnoxious to you?" He scratches his head: "I'm not really sure what to do about that. I care some about your mental state but not enough to neglect my training. Contrary to the lot of your my power doesn't work intuitively and I have nowhere close to a level of control that I think that I can say block an attack that's comming our way."

[Hazuki]

"Being efficient in the form of about an hour's worth of time over the course of your whole life. That kind of efficiency doesn't matter! And you can train wherever you like - instead, you do it without any regard for other people. I don't do all my gym work in the main room, because it's loud, sweaty, distracting, and, oh yeah, obnoxious. For the same reason I don't get everywhere by crawling on the walls, or use my sap to grab everything. Asking you to not use portals for everything you possibly can isn't forcing you to neglect your training, or imposing on your freedom, or whatever other stupid thing you're going to accuse me of just because you're not willing to make a minor concession when it comes to using your powers around other people!"

"Because, you know how much more difficult it is to teleport to your room than in here? None more difficult. To walk into another room, rather than making a portal? None more difficult - Hell, even less difficult, if it's so strenuous that you need to spend every waking second practicing!"

[Sønderjye]

"The only legitemate inconvinience I'm hearing from you is that you don't like the smell." Mads responds " And you should. You should be crawling everywhere and using your sap to fetch things. But it's still not comparable, as I said your power works on intuitively." He looks at Liz: "Back me up here?"

[Hazuki]

"Oh, I see. Rather than admit your actions may have consequences that you didn't foresee, you're going to appeal to somebody else to help you justify your laziness. Thus, sidestepping the issue with the blithe disregard of a bloody pansy!" Lavender rolls her eyes. "You don't get to decide what does and doesn't annoy me. And the only legitimate reason you have to not constantly annoy me is...no reason. At all. You keep mentioning 'practice', and acting like you're the only person who has difficulty harnessing their powers, but you're not. Everyone does. And you're the only one using it as an excuse for being a jerk."

[NineOfSpades]

Liz tried to keep her head down. She tried to block it out. She reassured herself that it was just a little spat that'd be over in a flash. But it didn't. The fight from the previous evening was still fresh, and the toxicity wasn't going away it seemed. She had to stop working, despite the equiptment being nearly finished, for fear that the emotional anxiety she was feeling would bleed into her work. Visions of a rogue and malevolent Total-Gym (tm) loomed in her mind, stalking the school campus at night, attacking any unfortunate soul it came across in a savage onslaught of high-cardio workouts. And once it was there, there wasn't much she could do to be rid of the image.

Mads looked to her for imput, and Liz wasn't sure what to do. She didn't like being put on the spot, and really didn't like getting thrust in the middle of a conflict like this. "I'm not...er...." she stammered, her mouth somehow forgetting the correct way to make words, while her tongue seemed to be trying to flee further down her throat rather than get involved. Maybe it wanted to hide out in her stomach, along with all the butterflies that had recently moved in. She tried to imagine herself in her costume, which was about the only time she felt a great sense of confidence. It helped a little. "I'm not taking sides here. I think both of you need to take a step back and remember we're on the same team." Well, that didn't last long. The butterflies in her belly were getting more rambunctious. "I...I think that everyones just on edge because of last night, and what happened with that street gang. But if we're infighting like this, the whole group is just going to fall appart." Home stretch here, don't pass out for another ten seconds and you'll be golden. "Both of you should either shake hands and apologies for being stupid or....or..." Nope, out of gas. Thanks for playing. Check the leaderboard to see how you scored on this weeks round of 'not being a total wreck in social situations: home edition'. Liz sat back down, staring at her lap, and mumbled a few non-words before hoping that everything would somehow be fixed now, but deeply suspecting that would not be the case.

[Sønderjye]

Seeing Liz Mads feels a sting of guilt. He hadn't realized that she was that fragile. Noted for later. He is silent for a long drawn out moment while considering his options.

"I don't respect your reasons and I'm not appreciative of your hostility when I'm trying to understand you but Liz is right, we could do with less tension." He says to Lavender in a neutral tone. "For your sake I will limit the use of my power on the lowest floor and barring special circumstances I will make portals outside of doors rather than inside rooms."

"When I'm picking up when she gets off school I'll also give her an apology. I acknowledge that I was reacting emotionally yesterday and that I hadn't communicated my expectations. When she arrives I'd like to have a talk with all of us as to how we want to do things." He turns to look at Liz :"If possible, could you make something that casts harmless balls after me? I'd like to practise redirecting projectiles. The idea is the same as that machine that shoots a ball after those guys who swings a baseball bat at them."

[Hazuki]

"And I don't respect that you're not willing to do something for a teammate without debating about it first." Lavender leans back in her seat, runs a hand through her hair, and rests her eyes on the television. About as dramatic a conversational exit one can get while stuck to a couch.

[Sønderjye]

Mads clutches his fist while supressing a snarky comeback. That thankless bastard! You litterally attack me the second I enter our "safehouse" and even as look past that an compromise you have the guts to be a jerk. Mads thinks. He holds his eyes fixed on the floor as he with a concious effort relaxes his shoulders and takes a deep breath.

When he raises his gaze he looks at Liz and sends her a small smile. He couldn't really blame her for not taking sides.

[Sønderjye]

A little before 4 am Mads sends Nicoleta a text letting her know to go to the roof when she's off. He'll monitor the roof for some time through an eye-sized portal and assuming Nicoleta shows up he'll make a portal for her just outside the door to the roof, so rather than opening to the roof she'll open to the second floor in their base.

"Hey there." Mads greets her with a smile. "How was your day?" he asks. He doesn't really like small talk like that but he is having trouble formulating his apology and wants to buy himself some time.

[Professor Gnoll]

A trying day already. Nicoleta is finding it increasingly difficult to focus on her studies- she can't stop thinking about the fight, and the argument. Her skin seems to itch constantly, and it feels like her body will slip away from her if she loses concentration for a moment.
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. Of course. This is a momentary lapse, and nothing more. All will be well, given time. She hopes.

Oh, yes. Mads is picking her up. With his bizaare portals. Nicoleta can't quite bring herself to trust the things. They're not natural. Mads himself seems unnatural, too prone to experimentation, erratic and far too loving of his powers. But if they're going to be able to work together, she'll need to learn to accept him and his portals, she supposes. Ah, there he is now. Nicoleta places a smile on her face with the practised ease of someone used to manipulating their body, and responds to him. "Good. Very good. And you?"

[Sønderjye]

"Good" Mads responds without thinking. "Well actually most of classes are a bit boring. I have a suspicion that many of the other students doesn't read up on the material before class and that the professors target this group when they prepare the lectures. At least I learned a bunch of biology" he says with a smile.

He closes the door behind Nicoleta and dismisses the portal before starting to walk towards the stairs. "I think that we should have a group meeting and talk about what we want with this and share our expectations as to who we want to be as a group. Clearly those aren't aligned." He says to Nicoleta with a serious face. "On that note I want to apologize for yesterday. I have strong feelings against killing people but I never asked for your version of what happened and I never voiced those feelings. Furthermore I attacked you as soon as you entered and that's not the sort of place that I want our base to be. I'd like it if we felt safe or at least somewhat comfortable here."

[Professor Gnoll]

Nicoleta steps warily through the portal. It's far from natural to cross such large spaces in so short a time. Convenient, yes, but so are many shameful things. She sighs inwardly. Perhaps there is such a thing as being too careful. Mads is far from a bad person.

She nods as he apologises. The courteous thing to do here would be to apologise for her own behaviour, but she really doesn't feel like it. Nor does she feel that she truly has anything to apologise for. "Mmm. Apology accepted. I think that we had all had a bit of a trying day." Of course, for some, a trying day meant complaining about the way in which justice was meted out while doing nothing to help, but it seems less than polite to mention that part.

Well, at least she will get to see Lavender. That usually serves to cheer her up. Her positive attitude is infectious, it seems to Nicoleta, and even the awkwardness of a 'team meeting' surely could not dampen it.

[Thematthew]

Jenny rides up to the base, then casually strolls in while calling out "Hey, is anybody here? I'm bored!"

[Hazuki]

Lavender, who can't be anywhere but the base, hears Jenny riding up and walking through. She waits for the girl to walk into the living room, where a remake of DeathOps: Novio De La Muerte is playing, then twists her head on the arm of the couch to look at her. "Sure, let's hit the clubs. You're gonna have to give me a piggyback the whole time, though." Says the 6+ foot musclebound pro(-ish) wrestler, but at least she's smiling.

[Thematthew]

"You're just asking that so I can hurt myself and join you in our impromptu infirmary... So how's downtime for our injured amazonian? You start getting sick of these movies, or are you still resisting developing taste?" Jenny responds, with a bit of a smile.

[Hazuki]

"That depends, you gonna give me a taste?" Lavender asks, with a comic waggling her eyebrows. Then laughs and buries her head in her pillow. "Oh that was terrible."

[Thematthew]

"To call that joke terrible would be an insult to terrible jokes. Are you sure your funny bone didn't get broken when you got shot?" Jenny quips.

[Hazuki]

Lavender puts on an exaggerated pout. "All I have left is my looks, superpowers, and a loving family. Oh, how I suffer!" She clutches at her heart.

[Sønderjye]

"Hey Jenny" Mads greets as he enters the room through the door leading down the hallway. "Everyone's here", he notes as he walks over to the group and noticing the lack of conversation he decides that this is a good time to start what he came down for. He picks a chair : "Great. I'd like to call for a team meeting".

"Clearly we had different expectations going into this and I'd like to hear what people's ideas are and possible reach a compromise. To start off I think that our first priority is to come out alive and that unless we feel that those are at great risk we shouldn't use lethal force. This is partially due to personal reasons, partially because I think that we in the long run could benefit from being popular with the public and partially because I'm conserned that groups will default to using lethal force against us if we get a reputation of killing our enemies. What are your thoughts?"

[Hazuki]

"Nonlethal is good." Lavender, the hostage of the team meeting, agrees. But doesn't have much more to offer than that.

[Professor Gnoll]

So, Mads is still insisting on taking her to task for the incident yesterday. "No. I refuse to make any such promises. You may use your aber- your powers how you wish, and I will wield my weapons in the way that I see fit." She's truly had enough of this. As if their aberrations are anything but monstrous, that they can pretend to still be fully human.

[Hazuki]

Lavender shifts slightly in her seat (And with a wince), and folds her arms over her chest. "Nicoleta...I get that you think this whole thing sucks. And I don't think I can really help with that. even though I'd like to. But if our powers are a curse or something, shouldn't we be the only ones who it hurts?" She scratches her head. "It's 'You've got a life sentence in prison', not 'You've got a life sentence in prison, along with a few years for whoever's name you pick out of this hat'. That wouldn't be fair."

"I guess us having them is unfair, too, but...if you go around making things unfair for other people, because you're being treated unfairly, then they're going to make things unfair for other people, and it goes on and on until the whole world's gone to crap." She pauses. "So, I mean, if we at least try to be fair, then the world's a bit better. And if we keep doing that, maybe, eventually, nobody will have to feel like you feel right now." She smiles, although not at her most confidently. "Y'know?"

[Professor Gnoll]

Nicoleta says nothing for a moment, taking in what Lavender said. "I... suppose that you are right." But she sounds unconvinced. The words Lavender is saying make sense, but don't seem to quite grasp the situation at hand. It's easy for her to pretend that everything's alright, and they can all be happy and make the world happy and dance around in frilly skirts singing songs and watching terrible movies. But it's Nicoleta who'll be going home to sleep in an iron box.