Tensor

Rusty was still getting used to the new school, which was so much bigger than his last one. He hadn't really wanted to leave, but this was apparently the place to go if you happened to have somewhat dangerous, almost out of control powers. That was him in a nutshell. What a sucky nutshell. Although the really sucky nutshell had been behaving itself for a while now.

He was enjoying the weather. It was warm. Headphones in, eyes closed, he was laying in the grass, humming to himself along with the music and not even paying attention to the world around him. It was warm. He was thinking of surfing.

Kitty wasn't aware of much beyond a slow, steady beeping and a dull pain that seemed to be intensifying slightly as other familiar sounds came into focus. She had a few, very fuzzy, memories of assorted faces hovering over her. Her parents, a SHIELD agent, doctors, friends... none of it really fit into a timeline that she could put together in her mind, though. Slowly, she opened her eyes, blinking away the blurriness. It didn't take a lot to figure out that she was in a hospital of some sort, and she turned her head slightly, letting out a whimper as the pain in her jaw spiked. She sucked in a breath then clenched her eyes shut again as another sudden twinge in her torso. Well, at least it was pretty obvious that she wasn't dead. That was something.

Though most of the week had been rainy, Saturday was shaping up to be a nice, sunny day. The change in weather had brought tourists and locals alike out of hiding, and the mall was buzzing with activity. The students and chaperons of the Xavier Academy were spread throughout the mall and museum buildings, having agreed upon times to meet up and check in before being sent off to see as much as possible in the time they had. By about an hour after lunchtime, a lot of them had breezed through at least one of the museums and were headed on to their scheduled tours or to their next destination.

Few, if any, really noticed the young man crossing the grass in front of the castle, wearing nothing that identified him as a member of any of the numerous school groups on the grounds that day. He was obviously disoriented, sweating profusely and staggering as he made his way out of the castle and across the mall. He stumbled once and nearly fell to his knees before he recovered, which prompted a girl nearby to stop and take notice of him. She asked him if he needed help, laid a hand on his shoulder as he turned wide, pain-filled eyes on her...and then they both disappeared in a blast of heat and light that ripped across the mall like a tiny nuclear explosion.

The people nearest the blast were incinerated almost instantly, though the heat dissipated away quickly as a concussive blast rolled across the lawn, tossing people in front of it like rag dolls thrown by a giant's hand. The west wing of the castle simply buckled at the impact, stone toppling down to crush the dozens of unsuspecting tourists in and around it before they even had time to register the explosion. The east wing buckled and groaned dangerously as well, its collapse simply slower and less complete as the shock wave continued on, buckling walls and foundations, blowing out windows and bringing down sections of roof in the buildings beyond.

But even as the initial explosion finally reached its limit, a domino effect magnified the chaos as hundreds of powered tourists, adults and children alike, reflexively powered up in response to the catastrophe, some of them losing control entirely. There were smaller explosions and tongues of flame here and there among the ruins as dust swirled in the air, and it was only a matter of moments before the first sirens began to wail in the distance. At the scene of the disaster, though, the sound of them was lost almost completely in the sound of panicked voices crying out in fear and pain.


(OOC: Please create sub-threads below for the events and immediate aftermath. Feel free to actually play out the actual explosion and how your character responds or to simply do a narrative of what happened to them and move to the aftermath if you're more comfortable with that. Remember, there's about a ten minute window of opportunity for heroism before local emergency responders and SHIELD will be on site and beginning to take over, though the cadets will definitely be co-opted into the rescue effort. The worst injured will, initially, be taken to area hospitals once rescued, but the Academy students will, once stable, be transported back to the school's med center for continuing treatment there. Parents are, of course, welcome to take their children home for treatment if they desire, but between the school and the SHIELD facility attached to it, they have access to pretty much the best healers in the country. This does, however, still mean a relatively slow recovery for anyone with severe injuries given the general caliber of even exceptionally talented healers does not begin to compare to the very very few omega healers scattered across the globe.)

ETA: GUYS, WE KINDA SUCK AND FORGOT TO TELL YOU THAT THEY GOT BUSED UP TO DC FRIDAY AFTER SCHOOL so they could have all of Saturday at the Smithsonian, and thus why they already got to see cool stuff Saturday before boom rather than spending it all on a bus. Also, for sleeping arrangements, if your roomie went you got matched up with them plus the 2 others you share a suite with (so 4 to a room, and if you have no PC/NPC roomies then NPCs will have taken the spots), other than the chaperons who got spread around in singles for supervisory purposes. Sorry!

Kitty headed down the hall, schedule in hand. She wasn't sure if training with Noah all the time was really a smart idea, in terms of not overdoing it right off the bat, but maybe it would be fun. Besides, other people could join in and then maybe she wouldn't be the only one holding him back or looking pathetic while he just owned everything.

When she reached his room, she knocked on the door. With just about anyone, she probably wouldn't have even bothered, but for as long as she'd known Noah, she didn't really know Noah. Even though he was expecting her, she didn't want to just barge in.

Kitty hummed to herself as she headed down the hallway, plastic bag in hand. As she passed the common room, she ducked in to grab a couple of sodas from the vending machine, then continued on her way as casually as possible. It was almost as though she wasn't carrying a bag of glitter, destined to be used to prank one of her classmates. She smiled at another student as she passed and then turned and headed into Bobby and Sam's room, not bothering to knock before she phased in.

"I found the rest of the glitter," she announced, holding the bag up before tossing it onto Sam's balloon-covered bed. She plopped down next to Bobby and held out one of the sodas. "And I got you a present."

Forward dated to Sunday, late afternoon. Nishi Ginza Department Store, Tokyo, Japan.

For both the results of the shopping spree and for larger-than-life Sam Guthrie, Shinobi had rented the largest car available that wasn't a pick up and had gotten his mother's driver to chauffeur them around. After dropping them off at Sanrio World, Shin had gone on to buy some snacks, food, and manga, shipping some of it back to America and taking the rest of it home to his family's large apartment. Sebastian Shaw did not often come to Japan and when he did he usually stayed in the best hotel possible, so the apartment was more the territory of Shin and his mother, who used it at length at least three times a year. It was a welcome calm after the storm of The Three.

His business concluded early, he decided to return to the mall early to watch the tail end of the shopping, even if it meant submersing himself in Hello Kitty for half an hour or more. Watching The Three would be more than entertaining, he was sure.

The translator he'd hired was an old friend of his mother's, Hiro-san, who'd been intrigued by his proposition and had happily taken the large payment in exchange for trying to keep up with a teenage girl with money to burn and bffs-turned-butlers to boss around.

Walking past the large Hello Kitty on top of a white globe, he bowed to the first store personnel he found with a polite 'konnichiwa, hajimemashite' and looked around for the flurry he had come to expect from Pryde-san.

*konnichiwa, hajimemashite - hello, pleased to meet you

Chase had totally misjudged Kitty. She was clearly one of the awesome geeks who possibly not even geeky. Like him. Depending on if the ninja thing was at all accurate. Because ninjas were not geeks. Except Donatello and Donatello was a techno wizard, so he got a pass anyway.

He was enjoying going back and forth with her. Contrary to what he was teasing her with, he did indeed have pants on. Sweatpants, but pants none the less. He had no shirt on, because he was in his room and kicking back. That and he'd not bothered to put one back on after his shower earlier.

For now he was gleefully trading glib posts with Ms. Katherine Anne Pryde. And completely distracted by it.

Who: Bobby and Josh
When: Thursday, 3/10
Where: In class, before the teacher arrives
What: An attempt at cheer

( You want to talk about it? )

Jared had enjoyed playing some basketball with the other students but always wandered around when meal times popped up. He'd wait until things had died down a little and then he'd strap the zapper to his face and find something to convert to energy for himself. More than likely he'd go with something boring like wheat bread or oatmeal. His body seemed to function best when it was given a lot of carbs. Watching other kids munch down on grub--or worse watch him with his damn bug zapper food converter thing--made him anxious. When Jared was anxious, he got angry. When Jared was angry, he picked fights with people. Random, stupid fights that didn't have any sort of rhyme or reason behind them. It was still way too early for him to be getting into trouble at this school.

"Give it at least a fucking month, Corbo," he muttered to himself as he wandered down the corridor, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his hoodie.

Then he caught site of a face he thought he recognized. "Hey. You're Kitty, right?"

Sam really should have known better after two years. Not that reading hilariously bad gay porn aloud to Kitty would have been the smartest thing to agree to at the best of times, no matter how funny it might be, but with Bobby actually in the room...he should have known it would go from a 'simple' readaloud to a Dramatic Reenactment, complete with costumes.

"Seriously?" he grumbled, making a face at the ratty, cut-off jeans shorts on the foot of his bed. "You seriously want to do this in costume?" He rubbed his eyes and made a face at the pair of them, but he was reaching for the shorts anyway because yes, apparently he really was that big a pushover. "Y'know, I'm startin' t' think you two just look for reasons t'get me half dressed."

The elementary students had had a low key party with punch and cookies and large amounts of glitter earlier in the day. That had all been cleaned up before dinner, though, and now the assembly hall in the main building had been...well, transformed would have been over-stating it, but it was definitely festive. Crepe paper streamers in red and pink and white had been strung from the chandeliers and along the walls, and tables down one side of the room were covered in actual fabric table cloths in matching colors, the surfaces littered with paper hearts and glitter and, almost incongruously, tasteful arrangements of red and pink roses with baby's breath. There was the obligatory punch bowl flanked by trays of elaborately decorated cookies and cupcakes, as well as platters of finger foods of varying degrees of sophistication and complexity. The chandeliers overhead had been dimmed to create a suitably 'romantic' atmosphere, while not making it too dark for the comfort of the few chaperones scattered about the room keeping a tolerant eye on the middle and high school students as they milled about, some dancing to the DJ provided music while others lingered in corners or slipped out into the lobby beyond the great double doors or the moonlit garden just outside.

In the lobby the music was muted, and clashed only slightly with the music escaping from the ballroom on the other side, where the college students were having their own event. The lobby was a large space, with thick rugs in the school colors covering the hardwood floors, and portraits of the founders looking down from the walls on a few groupings of heavy leather armchairs and tables scattered with informational brochures as well as a few free range decorations. The restrooms occupied opposite corners, and small groups of students of all ages lingered in the room, on their way in or out or simply escaping one event or the other for a while.

In the ballroom beyond, the streamers were absent there (though not the glitter), and the decorations ran to a more sophisticated black and red, with circular tables and chairs scattered around the edges of the dance floor in addition to the refreshment tables. The lights were lower as well, and there was a decided lack of chaperones monitoring the festivities as the older students enjoyed an event blissfully free from the restrictions of uniforms and dress codes.