[color=orange][center][h1][i][b] Thursday 14:10 Gaggle's Carnival [/b][/i][/h1][/center][/color] [color=gold][center][h2][i][b]Team is the Weapon[/b][/i][/h2][/center][/color] The fighting continued, as both Blackstar and Lightning Girl shoved through the clowns that seemed to be generated by an infinite clown making machine, but then again, Gaggles had certainly attracted like minded psychos for his little operation. An onslaught of the bastards came, but Sophie knew they had to keep moving. In spite of the hurt. clearing through another wave, blasting a bolt out at one that was headed for Blackstar, sending him off his feet and into the side of a dumpster, she appreciated being by Blackstar's side. Despite being new to this, holy shit, she could fight. Maybe a bit more lethally than herself, but then again, she remembered what she was like at the start of all of this. Control was hard. Blackstar nearly threw something at Sophie, and the reactions of the electricity-based heroine made her step back, her control of her dark energy hard, but as more clowns arrived, she knew it was that it came from being dazed. No doubt about it. Lightning Girl had hurt people before with her powers. That was why Tsunami and Meta-Man were in hospital, after all. [quote]A quick scan of the area told her she had a moment, and a glance to Lightning Girl nearby revealed the other heroine still upright. A little wobbly but alert and, at least for a beat or two, clown-free. Blades dissipating, Blackstar pulled out of the protective formation they'd been in, drifting off the ground as she exclaimed quickly, [color=gray][b]"Asteroid's here -- I'm gonna go get him. Tell him I'm coming!"[/b][/color][/quote] "Asteroid, Blackstar is on her way to you!" Lightning Girl yelled into comms, passing that message on direct, holding her own, the respite between clowns making her hobble towards a lighting column and generator, peeling hard on the reel to get some power and leeching off it direct, exhaling hard. Coughing out blood. Fuck. This wasn't a Thursday to expect. Nearly bleeding out, feeling like she should be dead, and still going. Normally she'd be resting up, wounded and back in the office after this, getting pills. Not fighting on. This wasn't good. She released, the power having fizzled into her, letting her body hold it in, the wound knitting up but nowhere near a rate that the situation needed. As she saw another clown come in with a meat cleaver, she visibly growled and leapt up, beaming him hard with a bolt that pinned him to the ground with an arrester, crashing back down with a punch to knock him down, before standing up, seeing the other female heroine come in with Asteroid in hands, and on the far side, a bloodied Hat Trick, who had coralled civies away, but at the price of being beaten the shit out of. Really not a great Thursday to be having an end-of-the-world fight in. It came from nowhere too. Worst case scenario. The team might see her face, but there were bigger issues to deal with. Not a deal to make. Everyone was hurt. This was a nightmare. And she was gritting her teeth through pain, as someone tried to swing a bat at her in her moment of haze, Blackstar catching it as her hearing rang a little, watching as she took on. "We need to hold them off! Christ, there's so many!" She yelled out, assessing the situation as best as she could now, managing her power, knowing she had to be careful. The clowns knew she was weak, but Lightning Girl wasn't out of this yet. Not given she'd at least healed up, and well, gotten a second shock. Working in symphony, Lightning Girl punched a shock into another and was mobbed by another moving on Asteroid, rolling into dirt before shocking them out, blasting them across dirt as she clambered up, watching as another tried to flank Hat Trick, the tall Canuck doing better than she was right now, but given how much was going down, they had to hold a line. She dragged the clown back like a mannequin getting peeled up, and lifting off ground, threw him like a ragdoll at another two clowns, coming down with a hard superhero land, not graceful, more like an awkward crumple from a high fall. And another ran in. A blast of electricity and the clown was pinned, as she ran out, breaking away from the group a little, trying to catch a little more haze. She yelled something incomprehensible, mostly in shock, as she came across three more clowns, one of them catching a lucky punch as she tazed the second, the third following with a kick. Lightning Girl fell backwards, thrown into the side of a generator. And it tickled. Poked. Pushed. It was still live inside that. She didn't need contact. She leeched. She felt it burn back in. [hr] [color=orange][center][h1][i][b] Twelve Years Ago 10:30 Gisburn Forest, England [/b][/i][/h1][/center][/color] [color=gold][center][h2][i][b]Flash Back[/b][/i][/h2][/center][/color] [img]https://www.mediastorehouse.com/p/466/walkers-walking-road-mist-little-bowland-road-9686211.jpg.webp[/img] [b]Soundtrack: [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpgjUXfbF2s]YOUTH 83- Seeker[/url] [/b] The sight of the lone pine tree in the forest sat before Sophie, the red-haired, cardigan wearing younger sibling next to the 20-year old, down jacket having James Speight, the car long since left behind. Both wearing walking boots, both equipped looking like they were walking out into the wilds rather than around town. The last place they normally went, but the crappy Peugeot 106 that James had scraped through a part-time job whilst at uni, with insurance still watering his mouth had gotten them this far and to a place that they remembered going before all of....this. Mum and Dad had no idea how to look after her. Dad wasn't in a good state anyway. There was no way he deserved any of it, watching his daughter's healthy complexion turn pale, the sleepless nights, the doctors telling them there was nothing they could do. So James had decided to help. Realise that potential. Sophie wanted someone to be there, and to at least find any way she could of doing something with this....curse, gift? Neither were sure what it was. But it was reality. A reality to embrace. Being superhuman was going to be a challenge, so James decided his sister was going to at least find a way to control what she had. And if he wasn't there, defend herself. Protect herself. Hold her own. And more importantly, do it without killing someone. The Forest of Bowland was not really a forest, more just a load of moors, upland and barren hills between Preston and the Lake District, but it was more importantly, quiet. In the quiet pine plantation, the mist gently sat in the winter sky, the weather more likely to lead to showers and rain rather than snow. It was bleak in the North West, but the outdoors wasn't far from Manchester, especially seclusion. And quiet was important right now for what they had in mind. "Focus. We need to build it up. Without it going haywire, without you fritzing all over the place." James said, as she looked at him, electricity still cackling out of her hands. "You sure?" There was a lack of confidence in her voice, almost an uncertainty. "Yeah. I'm no expert. But, we can't go all over the place with this if you want to......you know. Slowly. Better here than scaring people in the park." James was also as uncertain as he could be. But he'd seen enough dumb action flicks to realise it was probably best not to do this in public. Bringing stuff out this far was hard, so he reasoned- trees would probably be fine, they had lots of resistance to them, and Sophie could probably avoid arcing too power into them. Just so long as she didn't set fire to the entire stock. So the lone pine tree in the clearing was all she had. The red and white little spraypaint on it enough of a focus point for Sophie's eye to pick up and find. The feeling burnt, and went up and down, like it always did when she tried to channel it. Accuracy was never her thing. Neither at this point, was anything she was outputting. "You're not in my shoes, James. You have no idea how hard it is. Feels like everything or nothing." She was straight into a reply, the jeans wearing, cardigan having redhead throwing a little sass back, the kind she could to her older brother. "Well, you asked me to come along." He gave a little of his own banter back. Sophie didn't reply. She just threw out lightning. The bolt twacked, and left a dirty mark, as Sophie exhaled, the ground around her staticking, as she looked at him. That was nothing. That was barely even a taze. "Slowly, Soph. Come on. Like you did before. Let's just make the mark a bit bigger, gently. You've got a whole substation in you. Let's just tame it. You can do this." She breathed out. A moment of calm, as she adjusted her sleeve, first pointing it to sticks, as the ozone, the stink of it began to build. "Fine." You can do this, she said to herself internally too. Visualising. Imagining it. Like she'd done before. A straight, simple strike. And the bolt did what she willed. And more. She held it, yelling out, as it severed through and split it into two, and suddenly, the tree, uprooted, smoking from the heat, fell to the side, clattering into another two trees a little further out from the patch of clear-cut they were in, and coming in with a quiet thud. James smiled, as Sophie did, pointing it out, a grin on the shorter sibling's face as she went to make words, and then..... Fell forwards, putting hand out as she crumpled down. James didn't run urgently to catch her as the static momentarily shocked him and sent him flying into a mossy tuft, before he ran back over. "Sophie!" His voice was of concern, as the shorter of the two crawled back up, looking around, seeing stars. It was odd. It was like she had a fit of white in her mind. Like she'd sucked in too much air. So many colours. So vivid. It was like everything turned to an oil slick of hypervivid reality. "Shit. Too much?" Sophie asked, as James let her get back up, the electricity crackling. "Yeah. We'll work on that. You good?" James looked at the smoulder, as Sophie turned and as if something else willed her now, sent another bolt at the tree, the mark growing. She answered with a bolt. As if she'd seen something, stepping forwards, away from him. Into the next tree. She felt something. "Hey....that's funny." She added, drawing another from left, the smoulder catching fire as James ran over with a pail he'd pre-prepared, knowing it might come to this. It was lucky it was as damp as it was, because that way, Sophie wasn't going to inadvertently start a forest fire. While he threw the bucket, she looked to her own hands, then back to James. Thinking it through. Why had it done that? She felt like she'd sprinted hard, burnt through a lot of her energy there, but she had so much in reserve. Then something clicked. Why? "It's like there's a limit. It.....builds, though." She said as if to herself, static still pouring, hands back by her side, feeling it pulse, volatile, yet now in flow. In rhythm. Like it didn't alternate anymore. It felt direct. No more oscillations of frequency. It felt like she was part of a whole. It had limits, of course. How much she could put out. She had so much to give. And finding how to direct it was terrifying. But it was exciting. She'd just found out how much she could give, and well, now it made the smaller bursts feel like they were within reason. "I'm good, James. We can push on that." She said, excitedly looking up at her bigger brother. She was growing much, much faster, her growth spurt clearly late, but even so, exaggerated by the changes her body was going through. The flecks of her hair starting to turn white, musculature, all of it, clearly, the electricity did something to her every time she seemed to carry it. It made her more confident, more excited, the whole works, James noticed. And that twinkle in her eye seemed to suggest for the first time in a while, she'd found something inside her. James hadn't seen this before. This was new. This was strange, but he smiled back, accepting his sister's word, and hoping she wouldn't taze him in the car again on the way home. [hr] [color=orange][center][h1][i][b] Thursday 14:12 Gaggle's Carnival [/b][/i][/h1][/center][/color] [color=gold][center][h2][i][b]Lightning Rod[/b][/i][/h2][/center][/color] Lightning Girl surged forwards away from the generator, punching the light out from one clown and pushing off the ground with a flying kick into another, dumping her boot into his face with a burst of electricity like a springboard into air, as she caught flight and static gently poured and hissed. Gaggles was moving around too much for her liking. And the more he ran, the more chaos would unfold. Madcap had called him out. Blackstar had found him. The more reason for her to stop him in his tracks was to join in stopping him. If he was out for the count, maybe this whole thing stopped. Luckily, electricity was a great disabler. You couldn't run when you were being tazed. You couldn't hide when the power was there. And Blackstar had a good idea. "I'm with you, Blackstar!" She yelled, a little behind, struggling entirely to burn out energy and breaking over the tents, trying to avoid knives and bricks being thrown. Heh, bricks. She was an expert on that... Blackstar was carving a way through, and in slo-mo, watching Gaggles drop onto him like a brick shithouse onto another said brick shithouse was in full view. "Madcap!" She yelled, watching as Blackstar decided to take action into her own hands and clatter into the clown-in-chief. And then herself, being thrown into a soft toy stand, but clearly, hurt. She didn't have the voice to yell out what she saw. Just action. Lightning Girl clambered up a little higher, cape blowing, blood still there, one hand out and finding target wasn't hard. She had a red and white striped target and Blackstar had taken a fairly big tumble, coming in from that high. She was tempted to do the same. Dunk on him. But she was going to be smarter than she was before. And hold as long as her body would allow her to. Blackstar wasn't moving either. And it wanted to make her build. But that time in that forest, reminded her she could punch as hard as she like, and find limits. All of those things built up in her. Fear, worry, anxiety, pressure. But Sophie had control. Even past the hurt that made her vision blurry. She had to keep it, looking at her hand pointed directly at Madcap's throax. Limit. And the bolt wasn't as strong as she would have liked, but, it was a long-range taze, so, it would do fine. And striking Gaggles, it would likely shock him, in a method that may have seemed almost cartoonish given how much electricity the white spark put into him, making him more likely than not yelp, as she held in position over the group, blood dripping off her suit, barely screaming out the words past her shock. "Team, get in there and cuff him! I've got him held in place!" She yelled out, the maskless Lightning Girl no less capable. Every fibre in her wanted to put all of the power she'd gotten and just up the amps. She knew how to. She could do that now. Find a way to tweak the volume and suddenly that lightning goes from linking them both to frying him where he stood. Like a rat on a power line, turned into a fine mist. It would be easy. But he had to answer. Heroes didn't kill if they could help it at least- and while Gaggles deserved everything, he also deserved a fair trial and to be held accountable for all the clowns trying to kill the heroes of the carnival. And more importantly, if she did up the ampage, she was pretty sure she'd fall out of the sky and do what Blackstar did, right above a whole cluster of clowns who she had to keep an eye on below her presented left arm.