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Wednesday morning, Sammy is back at school and as fate would have it, Torrance finds her in the hallway.  "Sammy, wait up."  she calls.  Once she's close enough, she resumes.  "I wanted to apologize, about the TV thing.  It was such a horrible accident, I'm really sorry.  I heard that it might have caused you some problems.  I feel really bad about that.  Can you forgive me?"

As fate would have it, Colin and Sylvia are fairly close by.  Colin wouldn't normally be here, but he was looking at some photo proofs and lost track of where he was going, then stopped when he realized he must have walked past his class, looking up to see the scene unfold.  He gets the strange sense that this is how his life will be.  Wandering into the places he needs to be, when he needs to be there.  It's reassuring in a way, and gives him a strange sense of one with events.

OOC: What, if anything, will Colin and Sylvia and Sammy do???

Sylvia is like a veteran of war.  Her instantaneous reflex is to listen to Torrance's thoughts, alert to any treachery that might endanger Sammy.

OOC: Need you to make a power check (1d20+4) please.

It's hard to concentrate (http://invisiblecastle.com/find.py?id=1417578) with people milling through the corridors, but Sylvia persists.

Sammy slows her pace, but keeps on walking to her destination.  "Mr. Landis told me you explained your side of the situation to him.  I don't want to talk about it right now.  I'm sick and tired of talking about it."

"Ok."  Torrance says.  "I can understand that.  You must feel awful."

OOC: Sammy make a Will Save DC 16.

Sylvia make another power check.

OOC:  Why yes, I do feel awful (Will save) (1d20+2=6) (http://invisiblecastle.com/find.py?id=1417641)

"How'd you guess?"  Sammy retorts, hoping that she can get away from Torrance before something bad happens.

OOC: Too late  :-*

Sammy feels the frustration of the last few days and all the little bits that have been gnawing at her rise up like bile in her throat.  She feels the world begin to move around her, like it's about to spin out of control.  Her hair flutters about her shoulders in a slight breeze, her skin feels flush with heat, and her vision begins to narrow. 

Sylvia closes her eyes for just a moment, and in that frozen stretch of time she finds herself in Smith's room, reaching into the psychopathological turmoil around her.  The Mentano patients' sometimes frenzied, sometimes abyssal emotions make Torrance's mind seem small and tedious by comparison.  Compared to the psychotics' James Joyce, the cheerleader is Dick and Jane (http://invisiblecastle.com/find.py?id=1417812).

Torrance's mind is orderly and disciplined.  She is keenly aware of her surroundings, the people and their thoughts.



It wasn't a guess kitten, and what are you worried about.  Taking a poke at me, that's just icing on the cake.  Then there is a flash of intuition, and Torrance turns slowly, giving the evil eye to Sylvia.  Hello, fancy meeting you here.

Sammy drops her books and staggers back against a row of lockers, clutching at the vents and handle as she struggles to control herself.  "I... I think I'm going to... throw up.  Oh God..."   She pulls herself along the row of lockers and for what its worth, thinks of how pissed off Jack would be if he found out she lost control after he's been working so hard teaching it to her.  She clamps down as hard as she can to try to muscle her way through this, and her face breaks out in perspiration.

A few months ago, Sylvia was a raw recruit, a pile of mental flab flailing at the world like a combatant in a Jerry Springer chick fight.  But she's been training with the best, and now she's a soldier.  She has her assault rifle up and her enemy in her sights.  Back off, is her cool command.  She says it aloud, too, so that there's a strange, asynchronous echo between her telepathic voice, controlled, intimate, and fearless, and her physical voice, tremulous, distant, and breathy.  You're not going to get Elrod by going through Sammy.

Oh my, this is interesting.  So, riddle me this.  If you can obviously have any boy you want, why do you want Donnie Dumpling?  Come on Sylvia, this is what it's like to be a god among mortals.  We see into their hearts and minds, they're pawns to us.  We're supposed to use our gifts.  What are you using yours for?" 

OOC: At the moment you're using them for making a Will Save DC 14.


Colin's ghost site sees what he can only describe as a swirling wind whipping up bits of magic and swirling them around.  Steadily a tornado is forming around Sammy as she moves along the hall.  It wont be long before that power starts to manifest in the physical world.

Smith's training hasn't quite prepared Sylvia (http://invisiblecastle.com/find.py?id=1418004) for attack from another mentalist.  All her training has gone toward the investigation and subterfuge she's had to practice in the Suspects' efforts to keep the bad guys from running amok.  Nevertheless, she steels herself and tries to put her gloves up.  It's just enough (http://invisiblecastle.com/find.py?id=1418028).

[Edit:  Whoops.  DC 14, you say?]

OOC: You actually have a +4 to your Will Save so the second roll is enough.

Sylvia can feel the subtle logic of Torrance's argument, then she realizes it's not her own logic, but the logic Torrance is slipping between the lines of her own thought and reasoning.  Sylvia is able to shift her focus for a moment and regain her natural stance.  A moment later Torrance smiles.  Oh well.  You give it some thought, I have to get to class.  Wouldn't want to be late.  Then she walks off as if nothing happened.

Sylvia puts up her walls as best she can to resist broadcasting her panic.  What should she do?  What can she do?  What do you do to fend off someone with such an insidious power and no qualms about using it?

Her attention swivels to Sammy, and she rushes over to try to take Sammy's hand and calm her down.  "Sammy, are you okay?"  Sylvia doesn't tap in to Sammy's brain, but she does listen for ambient noise, leaking distress, to get a sense of what's happening.  "She's gone.  It's all right."  She looks at Colin and throws him a look that doesn't need telepathy to say, 'Fix her.'

Sammy manages to say "Help me, please.  Out!"  Tears stream slowly from her eyes, and her grip threatens to break Sylvia's hand.  Its like she's holding on for her life.  Inside her body, a tornado rages and threatens to escape.  It wants to toss Torrance around, along with every kid who thought that she had somehow deserved what had happened to her.   A thin shred of herself is still sane, and that part is struggling to keep it all >>in<< until she can get to a safe place.

Colin rushes to Sammy's side, his eyes glittering. He closes his eyes for a moment, forming an image in his mind, an emotion he wants to send through. Their night out in the full moon. That absolute quiet, the magic of their dreams. He slowly takes her hands, in the special way he can touch people. He tries to let the emotion he gathered in himself spread trough Sammy, and at the same time to absorb the forming hurricane, to draw its violence within himself, where it cannot hurt, at to dissipate it away, like a flock of blackbirds taking flight from his body.

In the whirling storm of power and emotion there is a singularity.  Colin takes Sammy's hands and the heat rushes out of her into him, they're connected.  The wind dies down, and her vision begins to clarify.  Colin can still see power flowing into her, and a chrysalis is taking shape.  He feels she's about to undergo some form of transformation.  Something that should happen outside.

"Sammy, it's all right. She's gone. But you need some fresh air. Come on, follow me outside, it'll do you good."

Colin gently leads her to the nearest security exit, and then up the fire escape to the roof.

"Breathe, Sammy. Let the air flow through you."

Sammy takes huge breaths of air, almost like she had been drowning and is now out of the water.  As Colin leads her out, she holds on tight to the lifelines that are Sylvia and Colin's hands.

When she gets to the roof, she looks at the sky and says "Up."  She loosens her grip on her friends; they can come if they want, or stay if they want.  It is obvious she wants very much to go into the air and let it hold her.

Colin's ghost site can see the very air, charged with magic swirling around her, into her.  The glow from her heart continues to intensity.

Sylvia lets herself be carried along, eyes dark with a precocious sense of responsibility for the consequences surrounding this new opponent.

As Sammy starts lifting herself up in the air, Colin says "Sylvia, look!"

He takes her hand, and offers her his vision of what's happening to Sammy.

Sammy climbs high, filling herself with the sky.  A remote part of her keeps her friends safe.

There is an pull to the power.  As much as she feels safe and complete, it wants more from her.  Like it's somehow alive, and trying to make her a part of it.

OOC: Sammy make a Will Save DC 14

Colin Make a Knowledge Arcane Lore please

Colin tries really hard to remember if Donnie has ever told him of anything like this, or if he has read about it.

Knowledge: Arcane lore check (1d20+3=17) (http://invisiblecastle.com/find.py?id=1419533)

OOC: if it's not enough I'd like to reroll it.

Colin hears the noise of the universe around him become the whispering of voices.  The voices he knows are the spirits.  They're always there, and as time goes by he will be able to hear them more easily, like now.  Each part is from a different voice, each giving the knowledge it has to Colin.

She must change, come into the power that is her heritage.  You must make sure to ground her, to make sure that she doesn't get lost to it.  You are like a lightning rod, your power will connect her to humanity and the Earth.  There is no other that can do this.

Ooookay. Thank you guys.

Sammy had let Sammy go, but now he reaches up and grabs her hand.

"Sammy, you've got to take me up with you."

When they're closer he tries to explain.

"You're changing, your heritage is awakening inside of you. You're like a butterfly really spreading his wings for the first time. If you stay close to me, I'll make sure that you're safe, that it won't blow your humanity away, because that is your heritage too. You're made of earth and sky. Open up to your sky, but let me the earth you can come back to."

A lightning rod. Ok.

Colin has learned how to make himself transparent, to let the spirits do their job through him. This time he does it for Sammy. As the spirit asked, he tries to make her feel a connection to her humanity, to every human, to every living being. He lets it flow through his soul.

I'm here for you. Wake up, Sammy.

OOC:  will save (1d20+2=11) (http://invisiblecastle.com/find.py?id=1419880)

The remote inner part of Sammy turns to him, smiles wistfully and extends her fingertips toward him.  I don't know if I can, Crow.  I'll try, but its time for me to fly, and I don't know where I will be going.  Say goodbye to Elrod and my family if...  She turns away and looks out.  Rainbows chase each other through her eyes, and her hair and clothes flutter gently as if invisible attendants fuss with her appearance.

Colin doesn't let her go. He pictures himself like the root that will allow the flower, Sammy, to blossom. He lets his earthly sap flow through her, to mix with her blood of raindrops to create something unique.

There is a moment where everything in the universe stands still to see the transformation.  Then, the moment is broken by a single drop of rain touching Sammy's forehead.  Is splashes against her skin and makes a sound like a crystal bell.  Then the sky opens up and sheets of rain begin to fall, but never touch the ground.  They swirl as if caught in a tornado and are carried into Samantha.  They bear the power of the Earth itself, and they fuse with her flesh and blood to make her more.  Colin feels the universe acknowledge him, and then the power flow back out of Sammy and down through him back to the Earth.  The pair fall slowly to the roof, and the dark winter sky parts, and the warmth of the sun touches them.  Sammy feels a rush of power flood through her, filling her up and then subsiding.  They settle down on the roof, and the world slowly returns to normal.

Eyes half-closed, Sammy lies very quietly on the roof next to Colin, temporarily exhausted by the flow of power.

Was it good for you too?

"That was... beautiful. It felt right. Are you all right now? How do you feel."

Colin is still amazed. There was a moment, a single instant of pure oneness with the whole world. It was too wonderful for world. and now it's like a treasure, a brilliant gem  planted forever in his memory and his heart. Despite the cold, he can't help but feel warm.

Thank you is the thought he can't help but sending back to the world.

Sammy just smiles lazily.  "I'm wonderful.  Thank you for helping me.  I think I might have gone away if you hadn't.  That would have been a shame."  She stretches out like a cat in the sunny patch on the roof, and lets the welcome warmth soak into her body.

[Just woke up.  Sorry to have missed my chance to help.]

Sylvia kept quiet during whatever mystic mumbo-jumbo Colin was doing.  Preoccupied by her thoughts, she stands at the edge of the roof, looking down at the campus with a weighted intensity that would make Kel proud.  "She's persuasive," is her non sequitur.

"She's mean. But being persuasive and mean is not a crime. Yet." Colin nods.

Sylvia almost makes a reply, but she has to rethink what she was about to say.  "True.  What is it that keeps us from taking whatever we want?  If you persuade someone to give you something or do something for you, how is that any worse than what you might have accomplished with the right smile and the right promises?  Is it a crime?  Is it even wrong?"

"Well, technically, what might be accomplished with the right smile and the right promises can still be called a fraud, sometimes. And yeah, it can be wrong. Still, has she done anything like it yet? And even if she did, how could we prove it?"

"You can't.  That's the beauty of it.  No one could ever tell unless they caught you in the act, and there are only a few people in the world who can catch you."

"Maybe we should ask Jack or the Banners. Surely we're not the first ones that ever had to deal with something like that."

Sammy is jolted out of her pleasant little reverie by the conversation between Sylvia and Colin.  "She... MADE me angry.  I've never been so angry in my entire life.  The only thing I wanted more than to give her the beating of her life was to do it when and where I wanted to do it, not when she wanted me to do it.  There were too many innocent people around who could've been hurt, I would have been expelled, I would not have been allowed to perform in the Winter Concert."  She stops, a puzzled look on her face.  "Wait.  What you said... if she wants Elrod so much, why doesn't she just, you know, take him?  She doesn't need to totally destroy me to do that.  And why ruin his rep?  Unless... do you suppose we have this all backwards?  I've been assuming its him she wants, and that I was just in the way.  What if she is really out to destroy me for some reason, and he's just a bonus prize?  So she keeps doing things to hurt me and I keep getting up so she tries something else..."  Her expression grows horrified.  "Oh God.  What have I done?  Do you suppose she... that kiss between me and Nick... oh God."   

"I didn't read her.  I should have," Sylvia says.  "I think she's going after you because she can't have Elrod.  Hell hath no fury and all.  I saw them meet in the parking lot of the Tasty Dog.  She tried to flirt with him, and he brushed her off.  I don't think she even tried to use her powers on him."

It's not true.  The kiss was passion, not persuasion.  Her world trembles.  If she falters she can level mountains.  Do what you do Spirit Dancer.

"Shhh." Colin gently presses a finger on Sammy's lips. "Nope. It wasn't her. It was you and Nick. Just trust me on this. You give her power this way, you give her control over your life, and that's not what you want. You have to learn to control yourself, and nobody else will be able to control you. It's very important. Especially now that you're someone new. OK?"

Sammy presses her face into his shoulder, looking for something solid and real to support her.  She's shaking.  "Are you sure?  And I'm not new.  I'm me.  You kept me here, remember?"

"Yes. But you changed. Like a butterfly. You'll have to learn anew who you are. It's gonna be a great surprise to you." he says, patting his hand gently on her head.

Sammy takes a few moments to get herself back under control.  "She's going to come after me again," she says. "But she might try to hurt Elrod now, if he doesn't go along with what she wants.  I can't let her hurt him.  Tell the others what happened.  Bitch probably picked up my books for me and took them somewhere, just to show how nice she is; she's probably spreading tales about me this very moment."  She walks to the edge of the building to see if Logan is in his spot.  "Darklighter needs to know too.  He'll find out anyhow, but I'd rather he heard our version first."  She takes a deep breath and straightens her posture.  "Time to go back out on stage.  How do I look?"

"Sammy, now that we knows what she can do, we're gonna mount guard against her. But you'd better stay clear of her, as much as you can, I think. You look great, but I'd let Donnie take a look at you. Maybe he can explain you better what happened to you."

Sammy begins to feel a tingle on her left shoulder, just under her color bone.  The tingle becomes an itch, and after a few moments the itching fades.  When she tugs back the collar of her T-shirt to see what caused it she sees it's a tattoo.

(http://www.kfaq.net/marvels/2011/Game/Sammy_tattoo.jpg)

Colin immediately recognizes it, as a Crow.

"I'll talk to Logan," Sylvia says.

"Thank you."  Sammy starts to rub at an itch on her shoulder.


Sammy looks down at it, and pales.  "My parents are so gonna kill me..."  Then she looks at Colin, thinks about what happened to the both of them just moments ago and how it felt, and asks "Does this mean we're engaged to be married now?  Most guys just give a girl a diamond ring."  Its hard to tell if she's joking or not.

The tattoo is only about three inches across, and when she touches it, Colin feels a slight tingle on his right shoulder, just under his colar bone.  Under his shirt he sees the fine lines of a tattoo coming into being.

(http://www.kfaq.net/marvels/2011/Game/Djinn_Colin_Tattoo.jpg)

Colin at first smiles, amused, then his smile fades and he does his best to contain his panic when a somewhat matching tattoo appears on him too.

Blackbird?!!! What about a little explanation?!

Sammy tentatively reaches out with her left hand and touches Colin's tattoo with her fingertips, and touches her own with her right hand.  "Some sort of agreement has been reached," she says, almost whispering.  "We both signed, or were signed..."  She looks at him with a million questions in her eyes, wondering if he has any answers.  "Maybe we ought to find Donnie to see if he can figure this out.  And maybe you ought to go give Sarah a great big hug and a kiss before we try to explain to her why we have paired tattoos."

The blackbird lands on the corner of the roof.  It cocks it's head to look at Colin and Sammy.

You are connected to an elemental.  She is connected to you, to your humanity, to this Earth.  You will have many marks in your life, each giving you power.  This one is is the watchful eye and may sense danger to you or others.

OOC: Only Colin can hear the bird, but everyone can see it.

Colin is immensely relieved to see his guide, and to hear him come up with a sort of reasonable explanation.

"Blackbird says they're marks. You got yours because now you're an elemental, but you are connected to humanity and Earth through me, since I anchored you down. Mine... is a mark of power. When I helped Samantha get out of her mental prison I got this one on my arms, and now that I helped you, I got this one on my shoulder. Blackbird says it's a watchful eye, and will allow me to sense danger to me or others. Sounds handy, doesn't it?"

He smiles, and touches Sammy's one. "Yours is a Crow. And it sort of looks cool. It kinda gives you a 'bad girl' air. If you think it might be a good idea, I can come and try to explain your parents about it. I'm glad it didn't hurt. When I got the first one it hurt a lot."

He looks up to her eyes. "No, we're not engaged. In a sort of way, we marked each other with a special 'BFF' sign. Do you think you'll be able to deal with that?" He asks with a grin, offering her his hand to shake.

Sammy nods and says "I think so."  She ignores his hand and moves in for a quick and friendly hug, gesturing for Sylvia to join them.

Colin welcomes both of them in his arms, thankful to the universe that his girlfriend is of the understanding kind. Not like...

"You still should talk to Donnie, Sam. He and his dragons will surely tell you interesting stuff. The spirits seem to think you're really special, that you have a lot of power."

"Yes, you're right.  I will."  She steps back from Colin and Sylvia.  "I think I want to go back downstairs now.  We need to get everybody up to speed, so they don't get caught unaware by Torrance."

Sylvia nods.  She seems thoughtful, and a little remote, but she takes the time to send the others, including Elrod, John, Dave, Greg, and Rob, a little warning.  Torrance Shipman is a telepath who can control your mind.  Beware.