groovygamers.com

The pep squad practices in the gym, on the second floor.  Mostly it's repeating the same moves over and over in the hopes of getting even the less coordinated girls into the habit of performing the routines passably well.  Oak Park has given up hopes of making it to the competitions, and so they've taken the novel approach of opening the pep squad up to just about anyone that wanted to try.  There are some girls that might not make it on the pep squad, a little rounder than the perfect image of a cheerleader, but they try a lot harder than some of the perfect girls.

Sylvia, in her first pass through rah-rah hell, was a timid little girl, but now she's confident enough to try to marshal the best even from the, shall we say, bouncier new pep squadders.  It helps that she can pick the new routines out of one of the other cheerleaders.  It helps, too, that most of the loud, bossy ones have been picked off by Oak Park's peculiarly brutal social life.

The only survivors of the original squad are Cleo Miller, Hannah Wald, Kansas Hill, and Lucy Whitman.  All but Lucy are Juniors with Lucy being a sophomore.  They're a lot more friendly and relaxed, and Sylvia can sense it's because they feel if they aren't nice anyone of these girls might go psycho and weed them out of the gene pool.

Practice is a lot more social and friendly than before.  There is more friendly chatter at the gator-aide cooler between bouts of practice.  Cleo is doing her best to get a list of songs together from the girls, looking for a half dozen or so that they all like, since dancing to a song you like it more fun than one you hate.  She's been elected head of the squad in essence, since no one else is really interested in the job.  After asking four times if everyone was okay with her being in charge and getting nods and reassurances she finally warmed to the idea.

By the end of the practice/try out there were about ten girls in all that decided they wanted to keep trying.  Girls that Sylvia realized would probably look back on this time fondly, but until they broke out the yearbook no one would believe had been on the squad.

OOC: Sylvia needs to make a Fort Save DC 14

Sylvia finds herself enjoying their company.  The pom-pom shaking doesn't have that competitive edge anymore.  They're goofing around; they giggle at their mistakes.  They're actually having fun.


Yes, but I didn't inhale. (1d20=4) (http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/1963019/)

The post practice showers seem less stressful than Sylvia imagined they might have been for some of the girls.  The thought crosses her mind it's her doing, her being relaxed some is helping the others, but she dismisses it.  She's not distracted, so there is no reason for her abilities to leak.  Perhaps it's just what happens when girls stop trying to be better than the girl next to them and just try to be a team.

Sylvia finds she is a bridge of sorts.  Pretty, acrobatic, yet intellectual.  Some of the girls come to her with questions or concerns, and she finds she's easily able to talk to Cleo.  Cleo is a Junior, but she's no Logan Darklighter, and it's easy for Sylvia to establish herself.  She's essentially the head of the school paper and strangely she's in a sort of 'cool crowd' that's formed from threads of other crowds that wouldn't normally be connected at all.  This seems to give her a good deal of cred at school.

Once the showers are over Cleo makes sure she has everyone's email address and phone number and lets everyone know when the next practice is.  Then she's on her way home.

Sylvia takes her time leaving the locker room, chatting amiably with the new hires and the old pros without feeling any obligation to represent either party to the other.  Her weakness has become her strength:  she used to feel like the freak, the outsider, and now she has the precocious understanding that she doesn't have to be anything to do something.  She's not a cheerleader, but she cheers.  She's not a paper geek, but she edits.  Not even her powers define her.  She's Sylvia, and she fights.  By choice.

Weird.  It's easy to be introspective when your muscles are warm and your skin is clean.  Everything seems simple and clear.

How long will this last?

As Sylvia rounds the corner towards the front doors she collides with John.  Her brain feels the shift in his thought patterns, the conscious effort to move like someone who was bumped into.  "Sorry."  He says, and she senses the long ingrained pattern of the behavior.  "Oh, hi Sylvia."  As his mind fully processes who he bumped into, and the flash of recognition and memory clicks that reference her, including the one from lunch which he tried not to acknowledge.

OOC: Sylvia needs to make a Will Save DC 14

A look of chagrin crosses her face.  She didn't mean to flash the world, just Donnie.  "How's it going?" she asks, trying to preserve her own dignity and save John some stammering.  "Headed to practice?"

Snu-snu! (1d20+4=24) (http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/1963144/)

"No.  Managed to forget a book in my locker.  Speaking of practice, how was it?"

"It was good.  Surprisingly good.  I thought it was going to be another round at the dog fights, but everyone was cool.  Nothing like a little death and mayhem to keep things in perspective.  I don't feel like I'm part of a cult anymore."

"That's good then.  I need to get that book and get home.  You want."  He stops, but Sylvia already heard the rest of it.  A lift?  "Ah, I'll see you tomorrow."  he says, shaking off the internal embarrassment that he almost said that to her. 

Sylvia's confused by that, but she's not about to let this opportunity slide.  "A lift?  You mean with a car or . . . ?"

John stops.  There is a furious debate in his head Did I say that out loud?  "No, I don't have, I mean.  Super Speed."  he says, resolving himself to the fact that he didn't say it out loud, but must have just thought it very loud.

Sylvia gives him an apologetic shrug.  "I wouldn't mind," she tells him.  "I'm the slow one, remember?  No car, no dragon, no teleportation, no flight, no speed.  When someone in the dark city cries out for help, I have to take the El, so zipping around, just once, to see what it's like?  I'm so there."

John swallows hard, and takes a step closer.  "Relax."  He says, picking her up.  "Let me know if you need to stop."  The world blurs by, a streak of color and indistinct objects.  She knows what they are, because he does.  His perceptions filter to her and Sylvia senses what he does, how he does.  It's as though the rest of the world is standing still.  Then he stops.  She sees everything shift back into focus.  He looks around, then they're off again.  They move around cars on the road, dodge pedestrians on the sidewalk, and in a little under a minute are standing in front of her house.  Gently he sets her down, and smiles.  "There you go.  Safe and sound."  And safe.  You should go flying with Sammy.  It's really a much cooler experience."

"Sammy's never offered," she says, miming silent sobs of disappointment.  Then she grins, buzzed and exhilarated by the novelty of travel à la John.  "Do you think faster than the rest of us?"

"Think?"  he says, "I don't know.  I perceive differently, but I think thought is sort of governed by."  He stops.  You're about to become boring.  "I don't think so.  And you should ask her.  She loves to fly, and taking people along makes her really happy."

Sylvia's sadistic streak flashes.  She nods at the suggestion that she ask Sammy for a ride sometime, and then gently probes the boundaries of John's comfort zone.  "I wouldn't be bored by the details.  I'd love to hear them, actually.  Perceptions, neuroscience, especially paranormal neuroscience.  I take an interest.  I'd be foolish and dull if I didn't."

"Maybe sometime I'll let you plug into my head for a little while.  So you can see what it's like.  But, not today."  And the image of her in her cheerleader outfit comes to mind.  But not today's image, one from months ago at a game.  It can be numbing to be in here."  he says, tapping his temple.

Sylvia almost says something about his cheerleader fetish, but she's not so cruel that she wants to embarrass him about something that private.  "Numbing?  Because the world around you moves so slowly?"

"Yes.  If I push myself it gets worse.  And the noise.  Alicia's senses are probably better than mine, and more of hers are enhanced.  It's rough sometimes.  Especially in crowds.  I can't explain it really.  But being in my head can be really boring."

"I understand that a little," she says.  "Not the boring part.  The part about not being able to get away."

Then she clears her throat.  Since she's already demonstrated she can hear what he's thinking, she broaches a question.  "Is something going on that I'm not supposed to know about?  You seemed a little concerned for my safety."

"Safety?"  John's mind takes a number of turns, trying to pull together every detail about what's been going on lately.  "Did I miss something?"

"Sorry," she says, holding up her hands in surrender and apology.  "I heard you repeat yourself.  'Safe and sound,' you said, and then you, ah, said something about my safety again.  Just mental echo, probably.  Forgive my paranoia."

She feels his brain skip, and he tenses.  "Oh."  He begins.  Shit  "You're normally not this sensative."  He says, "Or at least you don't let on that you are."  She can sense him becoming uncomfortable.  "Sorry.  I should go.  Sorry."  And then there is a swirl of old snow and he's gone.

Sylvia looks at the tracks on her front lawn and sighs.  John's twitchier about his mental privacy than she thought, and she shouldn't have pushed him.

But wait.  She heard what she heard.  It wasn't just reverberation, was it?  He wasn't just chasing down the words that came out of his mouth with echoes, emphasis, caught in a circuit between his Broca's area and his Wernicke's area, was he?  And if his mind always works at such blinding speed, there are no stray thoughts.

She shivers, if only because she's standing on her porch in the cold, and has to reason out her course of action.  If I were just some girl, with just some life, I'd do the sensible thing and go inside, polish my toenails, do some homework, and ignore this.  But I'm not just some girl.  My life is fucked up.  My brain is fucked up.  It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you.

He was faking.  He bumped into me, and he was faking.  He wanted me out of the locker room.  He came to get me to make sure I was--

She reaches out to Donnie and Colin, her closest confidants.  We might have a problem.

Donnie is mentally reviewing the dangerously delicious wink Sylvia had given him over lunch, and the the visceral thrill of knowing that she was his. Possessiveness mixed with pride and happiness swirl in his mind until the object of his desire chirps her voice into his head. He stops halfway up his street, caught by surprise at hearing Sylvia.

Hi sweetie. What's the problem?

I need a sanity check.  Have you seen John today?  Has he been acting funny?  Are you at school?

Sylvia's trepidation comes across the link.  Okay.  Let me lay this out for you.  John bumps into me as I'm walking out of practice.  He stops and pretends to be startled--which, for all I know, is the way he usually does things.  He seems to be concerned for my safety, but that could just be me misreading a brain glitch.  He wigs out that I'm reading his mind, but anyone would.

Would you be suspicious?

Donnie stops by the big empty hole two lots down from his house where the basement had still yet to be poured. Kicking pebbles into its muddy depths he gives thought to John's reactions.

Hmmm. Well. Perhaps his paladin-like sense of protectiveness went up a couple notches when he saw you in the cheerleaders outfit, which by the way I have been fantasizing about all friggin' day. Attractive cheerleaders seem to be prime targets for mayhem or madness in Oak Park over the last year. As far as what's in his head, well who knows? He comes from a family of gifted supergirls. Perhaps he's been indoctrinated since a young age to keep his thoughts private in case some mind-reading villain happened to be poking through. Or maybe he just has a totally secret crush on you and was afraid you'd find out. It might explain the overly protective surge today. Or he just might be being himself. A good guy, always concerned about his friends and his appearance as a normal, un-invulnerable super strong super fast teenager who could take on the whole football team by himself if he wanted to.

You're right.  I'm overreacting.  It would be silly, say, to try to find him or to go back to school and see if anything was amiss.  That would be clear evidence that I'm suffering from delusions of grandeur, the foolish conviction that every little thing that happens around me has to do with a villainous plot.  I mean, what was I thinking?

She pauses, not as reassured as she's trying to be.  Of course he did whisk me out of school so fast that I didn't get a chance to stop in the news room and give the layout one more pass.  And I think I left my pink scrunchy in my locker.

Wait, he 'whisked' you out of school? Does that mean he was carrying you? Had his arms around you even? Hrm. Perhaps I need to talk to him about having his hands all over my girlfriend.. Sylvia can see the humor tinging his thoughts.

Donnie is joking.



Mostly.

I can wing it back to the school if you want. Check things out, pass on the words of our Lord and Master, the almighty Sylvia, Scourge of Worlds and Editor In Chief to the plebian newspaper hordes, if you want, and get your scrunchie.

You could, but the point of this is that it's not that important, right?  Nothing bad is happening.  None of the cheerleaders is trying to kill the others.  John isn't crazed, under the influence, or replaced by his own interdimensional doppelgänger, and it's a case of mild paranoia even to consider the possibility.

Just reassure me.

Okay, she concedes, but if anything goes wrong, I reserve the right to say, 'I told you so.'  Repeatedly.

Sure sure. You usually do anyway.

He jumps off the edge of the crumbling incline, waiting until the last moment before activating the gravity spell. His sneakered feet barely dimple the water as he concentrates on keeping his negative weight just enouogh to stay on the water. He walks across the pool at the bottom of the flooded basement hole and smirks to himself. Look ma! I'm walking on water!

It's Chicago in February.  I can walk on water, too.  If I could do a triple Salchow, I could go to the Olympics.

Sal Shaow? What the heck is that? Some ice-skater move?

Donnie applies a bit of mental pressure and switches some sigils around to meet the spell he had been working on for the past week. Pressure pushed him forward, as if he were sketing on the water instead of simply floating above it's icy-cold depths. Something wasn't quite right however, and the spell went awry, bouncing him off the muddy sides and knee deep into the freezing water. Ah @#$%.

He reactivates the proper gravity spell and he floats out of the pit, landing on the frozen mud above with a wet squelch of muck and waterlogged sneakers.

Better get home, Sylvia says, concerned.  Before we moved here, I read all about frostbite in my Girl Scout handbook.  You could lose toes.  I wonder if Colin can grow toes back.  I wonder what that would look like.

Donnie jogs home.

squelchsquelchsquelchsquelchsquelch

All the other Dragon Lords would laugh at me if I lost toes to frostbite. Hey, did you ask Colin about your suspicions?

He must be busy with something.  Why?  You think he'd tell me I had something to worry about?  You'd laid my doubts to rest.  Don't wake them up again.

No! Rest, lousy doubts! Oy. My toes is cold.

Donnie gets inside and slorps off his shoes, slopping mud and muck all over the tiles in the garage entryway.

OOC: We done here or will there be more worry and doubt?