Young Heroes (Open, see first post)

[NoiselessKnife]

Kei can see that Ilena feels a bit like herself and half wonders if the older girl has a choice to be here or she was sent to, she doubts the latter though, maybe, what was her name? Ilena is just kind of shy to which she can relate.

The man smiles and the gray headed kid is not sure if she feels more at ease or if she feels like stepping back, she half wonders if he spoke with the officer in charge of looking that she doesn’t do something bad, who knows?

She looks at the man as he speaks, calling their names out, surprising to say the least… Then he turns at her, well, she’s afraid she’s yet to hear it too, she never learnt it and her mentor never said something about it apart of telling her not to look back. The man introduces himself as Trevor Kensington, the name reminds her of some data saving devices’ label.

The kids wonder a bit, should she say that she doesn’t know her last name? For what? Looking even stranger? There’s another way though, she doubt, no, more, she knows that no one knows the last name of her mentor, so why not to take it? Nothing wrong on that, right?

As the man bows towards them in a formal way she nods to him and waits for him to get straight again. “I’m Kei Tolbert…sir” She says then before turning her attention to Akane, who starts speaking.

She didn’t notice her use of “we” as strange, as she thought it best, “I” would have sounded way too selfish, and no, she’s still unfamiliar with calling someone “sir” overall someone who isn’t her mentor, even with him, she called him “Boss”. Still, that reluctance means nothing about hating it here, she has to be there, so why to ruin her life thinking about it?

The Japanese girl goes straight to the point and almost seems smug about it, which makes Kei frown slightly, not really liking smug people, she shrugs it off and wonders if he will answer that question, she’s not sure of what “special” means here, but either way, she has to be here, so no big deal on what happens here. Even if it was a place for talented kids she wouldn't be that comfy, but anyway, she was sent here, so here she'll be.

[Thomas_III]

Megan is taken aback that the man knows her by name, though she assumes that her guidance counselor must have spoken to him about the details of her situation. After all, it's not likely that information about this center is common knowledge, at least if they truly cater to the kind of children that her counselor suggested. Judging from Kei's appearance, it certainly could be that kind of place, but she might also just like dying her hair that color. Akane looks perfectly normal, so she isn't sure of what to think. She figures that it's best to just take a step back and listen to what the others have to say about it. She could simply learn by listening. She looks hopeful when Akane asks the question that's already on her mind.


Trevor smiles at Kei, taking out a notepad to jot down the surname that she's apparently chosen for herself. He's surprised that her papers didn't come with that information, since it would be necessary for proper filing. He understands that bureaucratic red tape sometimes gets in the way of such simple matters, though. At Akane's question, he looks up to her with the same simple smile.


“It means... whatever you think it means. Or, more specifically, that is what it means to you. Now, shall we start with our tour of the facilities? We have a lot to see, and I'd like you to have a chance to take advantage of our resources before you each have to go home for the night. You get so little time here after school. Weekends, though, you'll have all day to enjoy the experience.”


Without giving anyone a chance to question his cryptic reply to Akane, he turns on his heels and starts to walk towards the right of the receptionist desk, towards what appears to be a gaming area. His shoes click loudly on the tile floors as he guides them through the building.

[NoiselessKnife]

Kei looks at the man as he speaks, feeling kind of uneasy under his gaze but having to relax a bit as he keeps smiling, she is not sure if he’s being nice or just faking it, but she decides to go with the first, it’s better than to go all paranoid. She’s relieved that he doesn’t seem to know the origin of her last name, she was sure they didn’t know it but these kind of people has more resources than her.

She notices the hopeful look that the green eyed girl casts to him when Akane mentions the question, she doesn’t mind, really, she doesn’t care that much, although if this is a simple school she might have trouble to adapt, but if her mentor told her so, well, she will try to do so.

Still, the gray haired kid is not sure that she wants to know that information yet. Nor she’s sure what to think of her companions, although she’s fast to forget her nearly childish grudge earlier on, she’s not fast to hold on a grudge if it is not worth it, she just not that sure what to think of them, maybe that Akane is a bit smug, but that might be just something strange on her, Megan is shy, even more than her, but she knows nothing more so Kei has yet to form a total opinion yet.

The answer that comes amuses her quite much, even making her smile slightly at that, it’s an answer, there’s no denying that, but he keeps all the secret to himself and gives the whole place a whole new mysterious aura to the place, that move remnds her a bit to her mentor, it’s the kind of answer he would give. As the man, Mr Kingston… no, wait, it was… Mr Kengiston! That one, starts walking the icy blue eyed kid hesitates a bit and finally starts following him, her boots not making the same click sound as his shoes but more of a soft “thud” as she tries to keep up with him, not sure if the others are following or not, something metaphorically hitting her as she realizes it, making her hurry up a bit more with him.

“The weekends… sir?” She asks, the weekends are the days she spends with her mentor, at times almost all day, at times being dragged out and kicked home, if the place was opened at weekends then… maybe, and she hoped that was a wrong guess, her mentor would want her here all the weekend.

“It’s only in the afternoon, right, sir?” She asks, not really comfortable with that thought, she’s not sure if the place is what she thinks it is, but she’s ready for everything that might come, still, if it IS what they suspect, then it’s not a neutral one, or so she thinks, it would be mostly a heroic one, for the good ones.

The heroes, they separated her from her mentor, even if he was, what they call, “mean, evil” and such, she feels it a bit of something unfair, she gets the why, she gets the stupid rules, everything, but she has no one else to rely on, she doubts this place would change that so she hopes the places doesn’t fill the time she spends with him. Still, again, she will adapt to it either way, if that what he wants. Maybe the next that would come would surprise her, in more ways than one, if it would change her, however, that was yet to be seen, not that she was inherently evil, she was not, she was rather peaceful, kind of shy too, but had some moral believes that were not often seen, too bad or too practical, it was up to those who saw them to decide that.



She hopes that he will answer her question though, that's mostly the reason she's following him closer and not behind the others, as she usually would.

[Madcat]

Aimee arrives exactly when she intended to arrive. That is to say, twenty minutes after the time she was scheduled to arrive. It was hard to blame it on an erroneous clock. No, that wasn't true. It was impossible to blame it on an erroneous clock, because she always had one right in front of her. Well, not exactly in front of her. Yet, there it was, currently floating in the lower right corner of her field of vision. An actinic blue that, despite its crispness, never seemed to be too bright or obtrusive. It also never stopped moving entirely, as it not only tracked hours and minutes, but also seconds and milliseconds. Sometimes, it even tracked nanoseconds, but that was only when she was deep inside some system's electronic mind.

She clomped merrily down the sidewalk, not at all caring about the low quality of the neighborhood or the many colorful characters who populated it. Though she was young, she found that her common attire, in this case a pair of knee-high, spike-collared black leather boots over black and red-striped stockings under a black lace and satin dress, with a high-collared velvet coat on top, mostly hidden under the cascade of multicolored braids that fell halfway to her waist, kept most people away from her. She found that when she dressed to the nines, and did her face in white corpsepaint and her eyes in darkest kohl, they'd often whisper "vampire-girl" behind her back, and stay even farther the hell away from her. That suited Aimee just fine. It was also her purse, swinging easily in her left hand, that kept people at least three arms-lengths away. Her purse being an old, Army ammo box, once olive drab, now spray-painted black and layered in stickers that read, depending on the side one viewed, "Agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial", "KMFDM Sucks!", "The Drugs Help A Lot", and, layered one atop another, "Sisters of Mercy Bauhaus VNV Nation The Cure Beborn Beton Wolfsheim"... if one was unfamiliar with what those titles meant, one would have to ask her. Almost no one ever did. People who got too close when she was walking as she was risked getting accidentally beaned by this metal crate.

Currently, her ammo-box rattled with a few packs of gum, her makeup kit, her keys, a cellphone she hadn't touched in months (she found she no longer needed it), a small spiral notebook, several pens and pencils, her dad's brass Zippo lighter (though she did not, usually, smoke), and several USB thumbdrives (she found she also no longer had need for these). Also rattling around in the box was the pre-paid debit card her dad had set up for her, as it was easier to control her allowance and spending, as well as taught her how to balance her budget, along with several gift cards and discount cards for Starbucks, three local grocery stores, her library card, her school ID card, the passcard to the condominium complex she lived in, an iTunes card, and perhaps a dozen more plastic wafers to local boutiques and clothing stores. Completing the pile in the box was her latest acquisition, one she had come across in quite a startling, but not unwelcome, fashion: three hundred dollars in cash. If you called her a thief, she would call you a liar, because a thief is someone who takes something without permission. She had simply asked the ATM machine to give her some money and, after a couple seconds, it spit out a stack of twenties. She hadn't even needed to present her debit card! These new gifts were proving more and more useful all the time

She passed by a building where green-faced goblins leered out of a third story window, their rough garb and dangerous-looking swords and axes identifying them as characters of a popular online game, Everworld of QuestCraft II. She had tried playing it once, but grew frustrated when the servers crashed every time she tried to force her avatar to shoot lasers. Maybe next time she would pose herself as a Wizard and the code would work...

She stopped suddenly, a flashing green arrow appearing in the air in front of her, pointing to the right and blinking insistently, bouncing back and forth along the vertical edge of her field of vision. Oh... bother. She'd walked right past the place she was going, and this GPS app she'd thought up was pointing her back the way she came. She turned and looked around, ignoring a strobing, screaming banner in the sky that advertised that it could make her grow four to six inches in just four weeks.

I don't even have a penis, she thought to herself, I thought banner ads were supposed to know all my personal details to better target me for rampant consumerism? With a blink, the banner ad vanished, replaced with an ambient trance beat that had probably been judged "feminine and calming" in a boardroom of men, alerting her to an amazing new skin cream that had been developed by a mother in {{Cookie.error//IP Address Undetermined//Host Not Found}} that had doctors seeing red.

She stopped in front of a door, taking a look at the brick-fronted building. A gold star appeared briefly over the door, spinning in victory, and then vanished in a silent explosion that left her covered in digital glitter for a few moments.

"Well," she said to no one, "I guess this is the place!" She switched hands on her purse, the better to bash someone in the face with if this turned out to be a Really Bad Idea sort of place, and pushed her way into the room, coming upon an already-gathered gaggle of girls, all roughly her age, and a much older man who was dressed rather smartly for this part of town.

She wished she had put some gum in her mouth before walking in. She also wished she had decided to dye her hair entirely black this morning, no, stop that, stay platinum blonde, blue and red, and had put on her bomber jacket instead of her waistcoat.

She swept her gaze around the small group and blinked, once. "Oh. Hi."

[Yukiko]

Akane raises one eyebrow slightly at the answer of Trevor. It's not exactly cryptic, he said, that he won't tell her what was meant in the brochure, and he chooses his words so that it sounds better like a simple: 'I won't tell you', but what he means is clear.

"Aah, a secret. I love secrets. This all sounds very exciting." Indeed. What resources could this be and how could she find out what's really behind this institute? It's clear, that a vague wording like in the brochure will probably not only draw superhuman children but also talented children. Do they want a mixture of both, did they somehow keep normal children away or is he not sure what kind of talent she and the other girls have and he wants to find out first, before he gives informations. At least till now the other two girls didn't show anything supernatural and same goes for Trevor. She glances thoughtfully at Kei and Megan. She did notice how Kei frowned when she asked Trevor about the institute. She didn't like her question, but why? Did she understand what Akane really wanted to know and thought it was wrong to ask? Trevors answer seems to satisfy her. Another secret.

Akane beams. "Maybe we all have our little secrets. Since we are all here we all have special talents, right?" She raises and opens her right hand a ball of glass, around the size of a ping pong ball, is lying on the palm. She moves the other hand swiftly over it, in a fluent and elegant movement, so that the ball is out of sight for a split second and suddenly there are two small glass balls where was only one before. "I hope I will get the chance to see yours." She says repeating the movement and a third ball appears. "I am sure they are impressive. I am looking forward to it." With three short movements she throws all three balls, one after the other in her mouth, swallows, and they are gone.

She bows, with a sweeping gesture like a magician on the stage. Indeed it was a neat little trick, worth to be shown on a show stage, especially since the sleeves of the blouse of her sailor-suit school uniform are not reaching her elbows, so it's not so easy to draw the balls out of them.

In fact the trick was of course easy for her, since the balls where not of glass but of water. The problem was just to make the trick look realistic but she is quite good in this meanwhile, she showed it often and no one ever got suspicious.

At that moment Akane gets aware that another girl entered. She turns around to look at her - she looks like little soldier which was in an exploding paint factory... Akane frowns. She is not very familiar with what they call fashion in this country. She is sure though, that an ammo-box is usually not used as a purse and if boots have spikes, they are usually at the sole. A decent girl should be decently dressed. That's what she was taught and the kid in front of her seems to be a girl though she doesn't dress up like one.

Anyway, Akane is not in the mood to be irritated by how someone dresses so she decides to show some tolerance. She bows in the typical Japanese way, her hands put together in front of her thighs. "Ohayo gosaymashita. It's nice to meet you. Sir Kensington just invited us for a tour of the facilities. Do you want to join?"

[Thomas_III]

In this game area, there are a few video game systems, as well as tables for foosball, ping pong, and pool. There are also some snack machines, and tables where children can either eat, or play card or board games to pass the time. At Kei’s question, though, Trevor stops and turns back to the group to answer her.

“Weekends, afternoons, and even holidays. You’re free to come here at any time that you’re not in school and want something to do. Technically, we close at ten each night, but we do have some bunks on site if you need a place to crash for a bit. We always keep security on duty to watch over anyone who needs to spend the night.”

The arrival of a fourth girl interrupts Trevor’s explanation. He moves through the group of girls to Aimee, greeting her with a warm smile.

“Welcome, Aimee. I’m glad that you made it. Better late than never. I’m Trevor Kensington III, one of the center’s directors, and this is Megan Jones, Kei Tolbert, and Akane Yamato. Everyone, this is Aimee Carter. Megan, I’m sure that you and her will get along quite well.”

Megan glances at the new girl with uncertainty, as her appearance looks almost as freakish to her as Kei. So, she doesn’t understand Trevor’s assertion that they would get along. It doesn’t look like they have anything in common to bond over.

“Ummm… Hello…”

She is likewise weirded out by Akane’s magic trick. Apparently, the Japanese girl is some kind of stage illusionist. She’s apparently a good one, at least. Megan can usually figure out how most tricks are done. This one was very realistic.

Trevor then steps to the side, allowing the girls to mingle for a few moments before continuing with the tour. He expects that Aimee will want to join them, but knows that she could probably figure out the layout of the center on her own, if needed.

[NoiselessKnife]

Kei’s interest is set on his answer even when the man turns she takes a few steps back, mostly to put space, she’s not paranoid but the tall man kind of looms over her if she’s too close and she tries to avoid that, the man is nice and all but it’s kind of strange to have him looking down at her.

From the corner of her eye she catches the place around her, it’s not bad at all… still what comes is not really that great since she doesn’t know what scheduler her mentor will put on her, she knows, or at least thinks, that she can’t stay here, the ankle monitor would warn the cops, it’s annoying to be a kid AND have that thing, she has a forced curfew at 10 o’clock, that is deactivated when she’s with her mentor, does it work here too?

The man, Trevor, stops talking and Kei looks at the newcomer with curiosity, again, the man seems to know everything about her, when her name is mentioned Kei does a kind of indication of who she is, raising her hand without much enthusiasm and then lowering it with a nod to the girl.

Well, given how Megan looks kind of uncertain of the newcomer’s appearance she doubts the man’s sentence a bit, but anyway, she glances at the new girl, her focus having been on Mr Kengiston and the newcomer so she didn’t catch a lot of Akane’s magic trick, she saw something with crystal balls…no…water ones, that seems interesting to say the least, is it really a magic trick? Well, the gray headed kid shrugs, maybe it is, who cares right now? The girl speaks about secrets and Kei frowns a bit, secrets are to be kept and if that it’s not a magic trick, well, she’s not showing her “magic trick” now, and not just because, her frowns disappears just as fast as it came, well, it’s no time to get defensive, nor to think more of what things are, doing that only makes things worse, maybe it IS a magic trick, maybe this is just a school of talented kids. She wonders what her talent could be if that’s the case, maybe fighting? Or researching? She’s good at it, still, she guesses that there are many better than her.

The girl who has just come seems, strange, and Kei half likes that, even if she doesn’t get where military stuff and colors get along but she doesn’t really care, at least she’s not the only one who is “freaky looking” here, although she doubts that Aimee got her hair color like she did.

“Hi” She greets with a half formal nod, she knows that due her appearance is unlikely the girl would do anything formal in the next five minutes, and if she did she would be surprised, still it’s just kind of a way to greet without compromising much. The kid doesn’t get close but her distance is not really one as to state that she’s not interested in knowing the girl. She lets the others speak though, not seeing the need to interrupt Akane as she tells the new girl what is going on, instead she glances around the place, it seems fun, she likes games and such, now that she can play them it’s much more comfortable for her , before, when she was little, she fried things when she got irritated, that never happens now… at least not often.

[Madcat]

Aimee nodded around at the circle, appearing slightly distracted. Truth was, even in here, the cacophony of data and cellular traffic outside made quite the din, and the Center's own phone system seemed to hum softly all around her. She could see, running through the walls, ceiling and floor, the dim lines of the electrical currents running through the building's wiring, brighter greens indicating the data lines to various terminals, game systems and, she suspected, actual workstations elsewhere. She hadn't bothered to scope out the network's defenses, despite what some people who knew of her abilities feared, she was not particularly given over to hacktivism.

Finally, her gaze stopped on the man leading the small tour around. She bobbed her head in a nod. "Nice to meet you," she said.

[Yukiko]

Akane is somewhat disappointed. Nothing wrong with ping pong tables or video games, but that's not why she came here. Should this be a normal youth club for normal talented kids? Till now no one showed some super natural abilities and her little trick didn't draw somebody out. Hopefully she is not wasting her time here. She forced herself to suppress her curiosity and show a relaxed expression. Her father always says she has to learn to be patient, that's almost as important as fighting spirit. Perhaps the second part of the tour is more interesting than the beginning. If not she has to think about a method to speed up things. She already has an idea.

She pulls out sunglasses. Special ones. The glasses are blue and much too large - there are small blue LEDs at the spectacle frame. VERY useful if your eyes glow blue when you use your power. The disadvantage is, that you look like an idiot wearing them - but on the other side she now matches Kei and Aimee better. Akane grins at the thought.

[NoiselessKnife]

For such an unique girl whose style was kind of dark Aimee was calmer than Kei had thought but then again she’s glad she’s not the noisy kind, she nodded back at her and noticed how she had seemed somehow distracted and the gray haired wondered if she was like that or there was an external reason for that.

She glanced at the videogames from her place, letting the new girl talk to the rest of the group, meanwhile she focused on the videogames that are nearby, trying to see if there’s any one she knows already, her mentor took her training seriously and was quite firm on it, but not everything was training and studies, she had gotten hobbies on her own such as videogames, play wrestling, of course that this last one always got her losing since her mentor was the only one she had for that, and doing all kinds of things with her powers, she had too learned to do some kind of tricks, but it wasn’t like she wanted to show those to anyone and much less to show them off, anyway, she had taken a like for videogames and now she had none in her way too empty house, she had the essential in that place, the bare necessities, but nothing really fun, she did not mind that but with her mind for a moment out of wanting it to be the weekend already she was trying to focus on what she could use her time in while she had to come.

The kid looked back when she noticed the Japanese girl, her name… Akane, pulls out some glasses, ok those are quite freakish looking, the teen wonders why someone would wear those and why the girl would wear them while being inside. Kei raised an eyebrow at her antics and mentally shrugged it off, maybe the girl wanted attention, she contains herself from rolling her eyes at that thought, she knows some people like that from school and finds them kind of annoying, they want attention yet a specific kind of attention, which lead to many fights from them, but well, maybe its something else, she can’t judge just with less than 30 minutes of having seen the girls, so she avoids from making any real judgment on anything and just returns to glancing at the videogames and activities, ever since she learned to not to fry the consoles she has had a like for them, overall the fighting ones or war ones so she was glancing to see if there was any to play solo for whenever she had the chance to do so, meanwhile she waited for Mr Kingston to come back, no wait, Mr Kengiston, to come back and continue giving them the tour around.