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Summary: Directly after Connor's appearance, the two firestarters, Ashley and Jem get to know each other a bit in the gym, and start up a game of who is hottest. Their flames are extinguished by a chance of Cloud, which also kills the mood.
Date: June 15, 2011
Log Title:
Rating: PG-13(L)
Gymnasium
cont. from Welcome Back Connor
Unfit parents and kidnappings. Definately sounds like some of the more out there Lifetime movies his mother would watch. Jem lists out the sorrid details, and Ash smirks a bit. "Geez, and they said I'd be safe around here…" Well, actually their words were more along the lines of making sure he's safe from the rest of his podunk town, but he wasn't necessarily paying attention. Ash remains leaning against the wall as everyone else splits. "…supervillain parents, kidnappings, alternate realities… fun place…" he mutters to himself before his attention catches on Jem's little plasma sphere. "Dunno… they haven't really tested me for all these technical terms beyond 'lights stuff on fire'." Which is seriously what Ashley put on the application they made him fill out.
What he does have is a little bit of instinctual control, which pushes him to reach out for that little fireball; not physically, but mentally, trying to draw it into his hand, like he's pushed away on flames before.
"Hm. Safe is a relative term around here." Jem smirks to Ash, "Especially if you hang around me. I'm pretty dangerous. As dangerous as they come usually." She is talking about girls when she says that, mostly. "But.. if you've got the stuff, you can adjust to all of the weird that floats around this place. It's all about how you cope." a shrug of the girl's shoulders. It appears that she is left alone with the newer student, and fellow pyro. She had offered the sphere of fire over to him, expecting him to touch it, but not expecting him to reach out mentally. With the nature of their powers and how they work on the mental scale of things, his psychic link actually touches her psychic link, as if he were laying a hand on hers in a way. It makes her jump just a little bit, likely not very noticeable, along with her gasp. She didn't expect to be psionically goosed so to speak.
She would normally be able to contest his control, to use her will to fight against his will in controlling her flame, but she was offering it up to him, so as she feels him pull, she doesn't pull back, she relinquishes her hold. "So, Ash, huh? Seems like a pretty befitting name, really, given the irony of your powers." She doesn't really refer to him as Ashley, opting for the more cooler version. As he pulls her fire over towards him, it changes colors, going from a normal orange to something of a happy yellow. Likely, he has never seen fire of various colors before. The girl peeking at him a bit, "You know, you can take your hoodie off of your head? I don't think it's gonna rain in here, and it'll be alright if people see your face." she grins.
From the reach of Ash's hand out towards Jem's fireball, he expected to reach out and touch the ball of plasma as well. The reach for it was all instinct beyond that, including the psychic goose, an action that brings a surprised blink across those bright blue eyes. Eyes that glance towards Jem as she boasts of being as dangerous as they come. No doubt Ash would argue otherwise, but he's keeping his cards close to his chest. Those records were sealed, and the youth doesn't exactly want that bit of history out to the general public.
He also seems surprised by the flame leaping from Jem's palm to his own, his other hand coming up to toss the bundle of plasma between his palms; no sign of pain, just a natural reaction to catching something one didn't expect to be tossed. Whereas for Jem it floated above her palm, Ash rolls it about the bottom of his hand like one of those meditation spheres, his free hand reaching to pull the sleeve of his hoodie back; he's fireproof, but doubtful that he wears asbestos clothing.
"Yeah. Irony…" Ash agrees, watching the flames dance in his palm. He watched a campfire, and a bonfire, and can't say that he's ever seen natural flame go 'happy face yellow,' but with a glance he attributes this to some measure of Jen's control. As Jem peeks towards the hoodie, a smirk crosses Ashley's face. "Prolly…" he replies, but then the smirk is gone, and the hoodie remains. "So you're a firebug too?" he asks the obvious question, flicking the ball of plasma back at Jem's chest, an underhand pass.
"Heh." Jem remarks to his comment about the hoodie. But she isn't the type to outright give up, intending to go another whole route as opposed to letting him hide and be all broody. While he is working the flames over his skin, Jem rises up to her feet, stretching herself and then wandering over to where he stands against the wall. On her way, the ball of flame is tossed back in her direction. The girl's control less about direction of her hands, and more to do with line of sight, so the sphere comes to a stop right in front of her and then shrinks down into nothingness, save for smoke and the diminishing heat.
"Firebug.. I've never really heard that term used before, but yeah, I guess so." she shrugs, and since he won't take his hoodie off, she brings herself to stand right in front of him, possibly a little closer than he would like, so she can see his face much more clearly. "I'm the hottest thing around, if you wanna get technical." she grins.
That's what the families of those damn rednecks called Ash, among other things. "..makes sense…" Ashley mutters to himself, possibly in defense of the nomenclature. A flicker of something crosses over his face when Jem doesn't so much catch the fireball as think it into existence; possibly surprise. Maybe for all of his "makes fire with the power of his miiiiiiiind" posturing, he hasn't figured out how to stop it in a similar fashion.
Then Jem is all up in his space, and Ash doesn't have much space to move, with his back already against the wall. Well, he could climb over the first few steps of bleachers that were pulled out, but he doesn't go that route to escape. As she peers up under the hood, she gets a good look at the youth's face. No horrible scars being hidden in the depths of the hoodie, no burn marks running the breadth of the boy's scalp. Just toussled black hair and furrowed brows at her statement; almost a challenge, that.
"If you say so…" the young man replies, blinking back at the blonde. Aside from a glance at her face, peering under the hoodie at his own, Ash doesn't make eye contact as Jem confronts him.
He isn't blushing, but he does seem to be avoiding eye contact with her while she is almost right in his face. Rather than put her off, it draws her to be curious, like a moth to a flame. Or in this case, a firefly to a flame. "Oh yeah? You don't believe me? Go ahead. Do you worst. As hot as you can get it, go ahead and give it to me. Don't hold back, I can take it." she tells him with a little bit of a cocky smirk across her face. She doesn't look like she is going anywhere, so if he plans to escape, he'll have to try to do it, because Jem is keeping right where she is.
To her, Ash is something new. She doesn't normally get to play with fire with anyone else, not without injury to them or the possibility of causing injury. But Ash so far was able to handle the average temp of her heat, which is saying a lot. But the fact that he seems to be withdrawn and sheltered only urges her to poke at him all that much more. Carefully prodding, urging him to commit to some kind of interaction.
Oh look, a bear, and a stick! Let's combine the two!
Jem's verbal prodding doesn't bring much of a reaction from Ash to start. Her look is returned with one akin to the look on a poleaxed bull. But as she's making no signs of going anywhere, the teen with his back against the wall practically sighs, shoulders rising and falling under the grey cotton. "You asked for it…" he says, even as he reaches up to pull the hoodie up and off.
The young man isn't dumpy, that's for sure, as his upper body emerges from the depths of cotton. A moderately tight-fitting tank top clads his upper half, showing off the physique of someone who is active, but not insanely so. Dropping the hoodie off to the side and kicking it behind him with a foot, Ash's attention is lifted to Jem, currently standing right up in his personal space.
With the look of a man facing down the executioner, Ash lifts his hands towards the girl, palm out. Maybe if he screws this up, they'll kick him out and he can go back to wallowing in self-pity. Then twin columns of flames begin to burst from his palms (or rather, very close to his palms), leaping out towards Jem as the human flame-thrower turns on the heat.
The thing about being a fire-proof individual with both power and a love for fire is.. you don't feel the heat from it. However you do feel the physical aspect of it. It still touches you the same and it actually feels pretty good to the senses. Jem is quite prepared to receive Ash's fire and she stands awaiting, actually coating herself with a layer of her plasma and own flames, in order to protect her clothing, so not only does she burst into flames, but she has Ash's fire shooting and bursting across her form, blowing her hair back as if she were standing in a nice warm breeze. The girl smiling and closing her eyes. It kinda sends a chill down her spine a bit, like she were standing on top of a hill, enjoying the wind and the way it touches her skin.
But there is no indication that it harms her in the least. Uncertain if Ash was expecting her to burn, but it might be surprising that she doesn't. "That feels amazing." Jem grins, "You're really good at this." To her, it starts to feel like a warm massage, soothing her muscles to relax and untense. She lifts her flaming eyes to look upon Ash and the girl smirks, "You might be pretty useful to be honest. I have this little problem with water.. If I get drenched, my powers get weird and I could damage myself. So I need to dry off before I can relight. With you around, that shouldn't be a problem."
Okay, now that's a challenge. Not that Ash has had much experience with people getting torched and not burning into flames and screaming a horrible burning death. Granted, Jem sounds appreciative of the streams of fire leaping from the young man's touch, but the challenge was issued. A bit of a scowl flashes across Ash's features as he focuses on the blowtorches roaring out of his palms.
As he concentrates, the flames start burning hotter, climbing towards the youth's absolute max output when it comes to strength and temperature. The streams thicken, becoming something like twin columns of thick power rushing from the space of his palms, starting to condense into something brillant white, leaping forth to wash over Jem's already flame-covered form.
Then someone else comes charging onto the scene with a cuss and a leap. Lucky for Cloud, Ash notices him as he runs in for the rescue, just around the same time as the telepath-on-duty puts the kibosh on this little exercise; the bars of light leaping from his hands don't so much sputter out as they simply cease to exist as his ability is temporarily subdued.
"What the fu-?" is the curse that crosses Ashley's lips as his powers are halted, the air is sucked out of the room for a split second, and he's chastized by the headmistress.
Planning on killing sometime shooting hoops in the gym is Cloud, he's dressed in black sneakers, grey shorts and is holding a basketball under one arm, entering the room he sees what from his perspective is a student he's never seen before blasting another student with fire, "Fuck", not realising it's the fire-mad Jem Cloud places a hand on one of the power-proof walls and his hair, body and clothing take on the properties of whatever they're made of, he then runs across the gym diving into Jem trying to knock her to the floor and out of the way of the flames.
As Ashley turns up the heat, sending the streams of flame to more intense levels, Jem can feel it getting hotter, but still it doesn't burn her. But the problem she runs into is the physical push of the fire, rushing against her like a harsh wind. Just to keep it from reaching uncomfortable levels, Jem holds out her hands and cranks up heat of her own, pushing back with her own fire creating a bright plume to where the two pyres collide against each other. Jem focuses, holding the flames at bay and exerting a bit of her energy to push back just enough. "I'm pretty impressed. So far—" The girl is interrupted as she is outright blindsided by a flying metal body crashing into her side and smacking her to the ground. Probably not the wisest thing to do, to tackle a girl while in the form of something harder than human flesh.
Jem goes down, and she goes down hard, landing with a painful cry as Cloud's mass smashes atop of her. "MotherFUCK!!" she screams out in frustration, before everything seems to stop through some means. Nothing was messed up through any fault of Ash's. But they went downhill pretty quickly.
At least they use Shiar tech, and not something more mundane like a sprinkler system. That really would have put the fox in the hen house. Kidnappings, guys in dresses walking out of dust clouds, and now metal men playing Robin Hood and leaping out of nowhere. Blinking and shaking his head against the events of the last, oh, 10 seconds, Ashley leans back against the wall with an outstretched hand while he waits for his vision to clear.
"Okay, now what is going on…" the youth mutters as he straighens, heading for the pile of metal good samariten and frustrated blonde. On instinct, one hand clenches into a fist as it hangs at his side; not that it'd do much against metal boy. "Someone mind explaining to me who the hell you are, and why my power just went off like a blown bulb?"
With the flames gone Cloud sits up and realises it was Jem, "For fuck sake", standing up he looks over at Ashley, "She asked you to blast her right?", this is the part where the girl is gonna go mental cos he tackled her, she will not be able to see what things looked like from his perspective and the utter stupidity of what she was just doing, "Mansion has defenses put in place, thats why we have the DR sessions to practise powers"
Jem isn't really upset so much as sore. Flames she can handle, heavy objects being thrown on her natsumuch. All she knows is, that hurt, and she even kicks her legs a little bit at Cloud as he gets up off of her, as he isn't getting up fast enough for her. Luckily the girl knows how to take a fall. Having dropped on the ice many many times through her lifetime, she has learned how to roll with the punches. She quickly gets up to her feet, holding her hurt side, and shooting a frown in Cloud's direction. "I did." she say, teeth clenched through her pain. "God, Cloud.. look who's talking! You change into metal.. with your power.. and then tackle a girl? Really? Obviously I wasn't getting hurt by it, and you've seen me on fire before. So why do you decide now of all times to jump in and try to crush me?"
She is all for being impulsive, but she at least has a moment of forethought just before she acts on something. "Damnit.." she winces and pulls her way over to the bleachers to have a seat, favoring her side a bit. "We'd have been fine, Ash. Don't worry about it."
Ash is the newbie here, and doesn't know either Jem or Cloud enough to really react one way or the other once it all hits the fan. As the dogpile breaks apart, he backs up a few steps from the crash site. "She started it…" is the retort, as weak as one can get, as he clomps back towards his discarded backpack and sweatshirt. She started it, and even if he won't admit it out loud, it was interesting enough to use his power…
Y'know, when he wasn't blinded by rage and fury.
Ash stoops, grabbing the hoodie back up to pull it back on over his upper body, leaving the hood down this time. "Yeah, whatever…" is the half-hearted response to Jem's reassurance, casting a glance back towards Cloud. Well, maybe he'll still get reported and kicked out, there is always that shining hope dancing around in his dark thoughts.
"How could i know it was you, covered in flames you could've been anyone and with the things that go on here he could've been attacking a student", Cloud returns to his normal state, "And fireproof or not you don't understand how his powers work, you might not be immune to all flames", when told the Jem started it he nods at Ash, "Yeah i bet she did", "You're not gonna get in trouble, i'm guessing you havn't been here long, just try to be carefull", he walks over towards Jem, "You need to head to the medbay?"
"No.. I'll be fine." Jem responds quickly as Cloud moves to try to assist her. Right now is one of those times she doesn't want to be touched. This little incident had sorta ruined the mood a bit. "I've been dealing with my powers for three years now, Cloud. It might have come from self-discovery, but not an amateur. Flames generally only come in one type, and if I can survive heat that is hot enough to liquefy steel without so much as a surface burn, I'm pretty sure I can tolerate more than just a little fire." she reaches her hand up, pressing her fingers into her forehead and the bridge of her nose, wincing her eyes closed a bit.
Her green eyes open and lift to settle upon him, "I've used my powers in here before without any kind of trouble. If you recall, this place is kinda made to resist that." she sighs as she pulls herself up to her feet, reaching back to take the tie from her hair, pulling the golden curls down out of her ponytail and letting them fall into place. "Don't do this.. don't d
o that.. that's too dangerous.. you're trampling on my feelings.. you don't know what you're talking about.." Jem lists some of the things she has heard over the past while. "Pfft. That's all a bunch of noise." She wanders over to where Ash stands, the girl not looking all that angry or anything, and in fact, she sorta smirks, "It was fun though, right? You looked like you were kinda enjoying yourself for a minute."
From the glance thrown at Cloud, the thought running through that darkened mind of Ash's is probably along the lines of 'What, a mindreader too?' as he reassures the teen that he won't get in trouble. The tugs on the bottom on the hoodie, getting the folds falling about his frame in a satisfactory fashion. As much as Jem poked and prodded him out of his comfort zone, Ash is almost visibly retreating back into it.
Those narrow shoulders bob in the depths of cotton cladding them, as Jem's question drags a reluctant "Yeah, I guess…" from Ash, like pulling teeth. Then the hood is pulled back up over his head, the upper edge pulled down over his brow, shading his eyes from the world. "…whatever…" is the final moody dismissal as he skulks for the exit, "Jem. Metal-boy…" he says, giving each a nod of his head; at least, that's the best guess from the bob of the hood, up and down with each word.
Is this how he used to sound?, "Jem you are so infuriating, you gotta play things smart sometimes, this place can be dangerous", Cloud looks round at Ash as he makes his exit, "See ya man", he makes a mental note to talk to the guy later, he doesn't wanna have mad the new guy uncomfortable, to Jem, "By the way, i would".
For a second, she seemed like she was getting to him, or at least she was getting him to open up a bit, having gotten him to go with her request to pull down his hood and the like. Though with the sudden appearance of another, and a bulldozing crash, it all came down and Ash is already starting to retreat, leaving Jem almost groaning with a bit of frustration. Oh well, she'll give him his time to brood or whatever, and then she'll get to the bottom of all of this at a much better time. "We'll see each other again." she smirks to Ash, "Bye for now, Hotstuff." It is typical for her to assign pet names to people after meeting them, and it is typical for her to flirt. She mentioned that earlier. So that name isn't too surprising. But for now, she lets him go about his way.
As Cloud talks to her about playing things smart, Jem arches a brow, "Exsuce me? You. Are talking to me? About playing things smart? The same guy who just threw hundreds of pounds of metal guy into 123 lbs of girl on an impulse? The same guy who thoughtlessly jumped into a portal that you had no idea the nature of? Come on bright eyes, really? Really? You're the last person at this school that should be lecturing me about dangerous behavior." Jem wanders back over to her things by the bleachers, taking a seat and grabbing a bottle of water to crack open. "And what do you mean you would? You would what?"
"Yeah i have done some stupid things before and i've learn from those" Cloud points to his chest, "From the portal incedent i leant not to jump though portals or you'll end up being a human post-it, so in terms of expirience i'm exactly who should be", he looks down at his feet, "Have the nerve or courage to ask you out".
"Wait, what?" she arches a brow at him, smirking all the while. "You're saying you actually have the guts to ask me out? I totally forgot I even asked you that." The blond girl chuckles, shaking her head, "Well.. I dunno, bright eyes. Even after seeing how much I live on the edge, you'd still have the courage to ask me out? Because I gotta tell you, I'm not gonna stop doing what I do. It would always be a crazy mess around me, and I'm gonna do things that have people bitching about stuff being too dangerous. S'not gonna stop. I'm a force of nature, a natural disaster.. and you can't do much to put a stop to that."
Cloud grins, "Theres a girl who goes here that i'm pretty sure sees me as an omen of danger", he walks over and sits down, "With my abilities i reckon it wouldn't be to hard to servive in a disaster zone, as long as i time things right".
"Famous last words." Jem shakes her head. "Well, at least you actually answered my question. I can give you courage on that. Most guys would have just let it be. And then acted all weird around me and stuff." She does perhaps look a little stiff, sore and perhaps a bit tired. All of her power usuage, it tends to take it's toll.
Cloud nods, "Well thats cool then", he looks down at his feet not really sure where to progress from there, instead he gets up to go and retreve his basketball, "Yeah".
"Well.." Jem moves to stand, stretching her arms out over her head and giving a bit of a yawn, "I think I might take a shower, or maybe a really hot bath." Most likely scalding, if she can handle high temps. "Are you gonna be alright by yourself? Or did you need me to stick around?" the girl smirks and looks in Cloud's direction.
Cloud throws the ball through the hoop, "Nope i'm good, i'll see ya later", not looking round he retreves the ball steps back and throws the ball though the hoop again.