Leaping Forward
13th of July 2006 A.D.
Dropping your bag to get both hands free you break into a dead sprint, sneakers pounding against the asphalt as you close the distance. A final stride and a leap take you off the top of an idling sedan as you jump, arms grabbing at the falling freshman as a part of your brain plots the least painful return trajectory for three hundred plus combined pounds of high school student.
"Ooh!" As it happens that involves grabbing him around the waist and swinging him around to bleed momentum, knocking the wind out of him. A lot less than he deserved to have knocked around for that tomfoolery, as your mom would say.
Lost 1 Temporary Willpower
You sit his dazed ass down on the car looking around to see if there is any mark on the car. With your luck it would be Mr Weis'. There isn't, but everyone in the parking lot sure did notice.
"How'd she get on the car?"
"The fuck, did you see that?"
"Holly shit, Carpenter."
You resist the urge to shout 'Language' at the last one only by dint of rounding on the freshman and carefully enunciating: "What on God's green earth were you doing?"
"Trying... trying to take a picture, you know a selfie," his voice breaks into a squeak on the last word.
Brushing some dust off his shirt, because your brain had apparently slotted him into 'hapless younger sibling' without asking your opinion you instruct: "Never try to take a selfie like that again unless you learn to how to
fly."
He just kind of nods, not saying anything.
"That is called awe," Usum notes clinically from the back of your mind.
"Come on," you sigh, jumping lightly off the car before helping the kid down.
During the hour and a half's worth of questioning that follows first by the teachers, then by the school nurse then by officer Jones you have plenty of time to get acquainted. His name is Tim Andrews and he's new in town, new in school over this term, he claims the people with phones on the third floor were his friends. From the way he drops his gaze when he's questioned about them, you think there's a lot more pressure then friendship in there, especially since they are all older than him, but since they didn't fall out any windows and Tim is not going to point fingers they get off scoot free.
As for you, well you're a hero. Officer Jones even says you are likely to end up in the feel-good section of some paper.
"I'd rather not," you wince.
"Why not?" she asks looking at your funny. An African American lady with an accent that is more Chicago than Chicago she can't be more then five or six years older than you and she could not be more different than that asshole Greene when it came to questioning, though in fairness the circumstances were more favorable to you now.
"Because it's weird and uncomfortable," you give half the reason. Anyone would have done what you did and with your power it's not like you were ever in danger doing it. The other half of course is that you do not want to come near the unseen line of revealing magic. You hadn't done anything blatantly supernatural, but it must have looked at least improbable.
"Them's the breaks," she says sympathetically. "You had phones pointed right at you all through the thing. No way the news is going to miss the chance at that especially to pad out a slow day."
The two of you are alone in the room, the principal had decided to go do principal things and Tim was back in class. You decide to take a chance: "They were pushing him into leaning out that window, not physically maybe, but it amounts to the same thing."
"Noticed that did ya?" She gives you another quick once over. "You'd make a good cop, people with a good eye for trouble like that are rare, ones whose first instinct it is to rush in and help rarer."
"Wouldn't that make me a loose canon?" you joke.
"But damn it you'd get results," Officer Jones laughs as she finishes the other part of the old cop drama saw. She shakes her head. "You be careful now, I'd tell you to stay out of trouble but I don't think you'd listen."
"What about Tim?" you ask.
"Can't exactly arrest his 'friends' on suspicion of bullying, that's up to the school to deal with." She drops her voice a little. "Though between you and me if someone were to put the fear of God into the lot of them that'd probably work out fine too."
You nod, biting back a smile. It's the last week of school so it probably wouldn't do much good to deal out any
instruction now for them to forget over the summer, but if they are still at it next year... well you have a good memory.
The rest of the day passes quickly in a flurry of impressed whispers and people who are trying a little too hard not to be impressed. At least Izzy and Alec are good about not bringing it up. Before you know it school's out.
***
The Chicago Duelist's Association is not particularly large, but it is well respected in self-selecting circle of people who still hit eat other with broadswords for fun. Dad's an instructor on the weekends when he has the time so when he asks for the keys to the sale for a few hours on a weekday he has no trouble getting them. So the two of you make your way onto the polished wooden floor of the echoing mirror-fenced room, bag of clanking weapons in tow.
Dad brought plenty of swords, but he sets the Sword aside for this one. There is a part of you that really wants to see how you would do against that, but to do that you have to prove that normal steel just isn't enough.
How do you approach the first bout?
[] Defensively
-[] Write in stunt
[] Offensively
-[] Write in stunt
[] Write in
OOC: The Chicago Duelist's Association is made up, I'm going to try to keep a balance where the big national or international organizations are like in our world and the smaller you go the more divergent it gets so that when we get down to individual people they are all purely fictional.
