"I knew what I could do... it was as if it slumbered within me and awakened when I needed it most dearly. I never really practised much. But it was something I deeply desired... without the side-effects, of course.", Anna looked self-consciously away. It was apparent that she resented her appearance.

"I just wanted to..." Ash starts to say, but she lets it trail off. What she'd wanted to do, she'd done. "I remember what it felt like then. It was like holding onto a firehose. I couldn't stop it from pouring out of me. All I could do was try to direct it. I felt like I had to push against it as hard as I could, just not to get swept away. And then it just dried up, and..."

She shrugs, words failing.

"And what?" Gregory asks with curiosity. He rememered little from his own eruption. Listening to her describe how if felt brought focus to what he did with his own power in his brain.

"You don't feel anything up here?" Gregory points to his forehead. "Power always there, unless it turned off."

Ashley frowned. "You can turn it off?" she asked.

Gingerly she touched her forehead. The headache wasn't bothering her as much now, but more because she was getting used to it than any real reduction in strength. Her skull still felt swollen though, too tight inside her head. Any second it seemed her scalp should split down the middle.

Turning her attention inward made the headache spike. With a wince, she shook her head. "I don't feel anything except the headache."

But it wasn't quite true, Ash realized uneasily. At the center of the headache was the feeling of something hard and smooth...kind of egglike. She shook her head, trying to dismiss the sensation, recoiling from it in her own mind.

Doug blinked and looked at Ashley hard. 'Maybe. Then again, maybe not.'

He said,

"There's a 'skill' some of have called dorm. It lets you turn off your node. Some of us can take it to absurd levels, their node makes them something else, then they turn off the node and they're totally a baseline again. It's like having two bodies."

"With me the muscles grew in later, but lots of people just transform right then and there. Others get lots and lots of aberrations and use dorm to hide from them."

"Try turning on your powers. Reach in and try to make the head ache worse."

Their node makes them something else... Doug's words resonate ominously in Ash's ears.

"What if I can turn it off again?" she asks, her voice thick with dread. "What if I'm...what if when I turn it on, I become...some kind of monster?"

"I doubt you will... and even so. We're here to take care of you.", said Anna feeling herself obliged to answer as the topic of turning into a monster arose.

Doug answers dryly,

"I think we'd have noticed something a few minutes ago."

He continues is a serious tone, "But you say that like it's a *bad* thing. It wouldn't be. We already know you won't go crazy or you'd have slaughtered the camp."

"I'm serious. There's a few people with powerful combat forms back home. It's a bit limiting but not a big deal. You let your 'beast' out to fight and put it back in the box after it's done."

"Dorming! That's what Buzz called it!" Gregory said, a little excited. "You can hide abbyrations and can't do stuff anymore." Gregory points to his constantly tearing eyes, and shifting camoflage skin.

He smiles at Ash. "Watch." With that he shuts off the flow to his node. His eyes become like a normal persons, and his camoflage turns off, revealing a healthy, fit and tanned young man of about 19.

"I look like normal person now."

Ash stared at Gregory, for once forgetting his pantsless state.

Do they know about this back at the Point? They can -turn- off their mutations!

Thinking that reminded her that she'd never get a chance to tell them, and suddenly she felt hollow. Her life...her old life...was over now. It was gone. What was the worst that could happen now?

She closed her eyes and in her mind's eye plunged her 'hand' into that hard little core at the heart of her head. The feeling was simultaneously shaming and a relief...kind of like how she imagined going to the bathroom in her pants after holding it for a long time would be.

The headache vanished. Light filled her. Hard light; cold light. That crazy euphoria crashed over her, like she was riding with no brakes and the accelerator was stuck. She was afraid of crashing, but oh God, what a ride.

The others saw Ashley look stricken for a moment, then close her eyes. As she exhaled, change swept over her. She didn't exactly turn into a someone, or something, different...she was still recognizable. But there was a change, nevertheless. In a heartbeat, her body visibly recovered from over a year of harsh living conditions as a slave and a refugee; filling out, shaping up. Her skin lit first from inside with an eerie Jack-o-lantern glow...but that glow then flashed as it seemed to move outside her body and settle into an aura that surrounded her in a blue-white radiance bright enough to clearly see in full daylight. That same bright cyan light beamed from each of her eyes when she opened them.

"Wow," she breathed.

Doug smiles and says,

"Not too monstrous I think. Think you can fly now?"

Ash lifts herself onto the balls of her feet and bounces a couple of times, then drops back onto her heels.

"I don't...think so," she says after a moment. "Unless I'm doing it wrong. Are we all supposed to fly?"

Doug chuckles and responds,

"There is nothing that all of us are supposed to be able to do. Flight is common, but a lot more don't have it than do. Just relax. We saw you nail those abbies. Try doing the same against that big rock there."

With a nod, Ash looks at the indicated boulder. She remembers still what happened in the triage area, but it feels different now. Not as overwhelming, in both good and bad ways. Even so, she discovers it works pretty much the same way.

When she lifts her hand towards the boulder, something brilliant and white whickers out of it almost too fast to see. It looks like a pulse of light, but from how the large rock craters and cracks instead of melting, it must strike with significant physical force. The force of it's passage stirs the air and makes a hollow 'WHUMP' noise...not nearly as loud as her attack before had been though.

Ash pulls her hand back and inspects it, frowning. It's actually easier in some ways to 'fire' than she likes. The energy inside her is like a coiled spring, constantly demanding release. There's something odd about her muscles too...how they're moving. She can't quite put her finger on it though. They don't seem stronger than before...

Doug says,

"Good. Now..." He holds out a rock, "See how far you can throw this. After that take three of them and see if you can juggle."

"I wish I could do that" Gregory says, still staring at the rock that she had shot the blast of light at. "I can make things that do that, but I can't." One day, Gregory told himself, he would be able to do that. He was tired of using the noisy and smelly pistol.

He paused for a second and realized that it was a little brisk outside and that he was getting goose-flesh. His member had shrunk and tucked itself into his body to keep warm. He tried to remember where he had put his shorts and then realized that he had left them at the camp outside the walls. Shrugging, he let the energy flow back into his body. Immediately, his physical responses to the cold air went away. His crying eyes returned as well.

Ash takes hold of the rock and cocks her arm back. She feels a bit self-conscious with everyone watching...especially when the rock fails to whistle off into the stratosphere. It flies a respectable distance though, for a baseline.

She shrugs and picks up a few more. "I could juggle when I was a human being," she points out as she starts tossing them.

Immediately Ash realizes that something's changed. That difference in her muscles became startlingly clear, though she didn't have the words to explain it. Her hands moved precisely at the speed and to precisely the places they needed to be. Whatever calculus her brain automatically performed had been perfected. Whatever barriers in the body and nerves that interfered between intention and execution were gone.

In seconds it becomes clear that the only limit on how fast Ashley can now juggle is the acceleration of gravity. She finds that the more she focuses on what she's doing, the clearer they get. Things seem to slow down somehow. It's a trick of perception...a reaction to the fact that speed, like everything else, is judged in relative terms by the brain. As Ash speeds up, everything else seems to get slower.

In the end she's up to ten rocks at freefall speed. The extra four she scoops up off the ground herself...while the others are in the air. Adding an eighth proves just a -bit- too much, and one drops before she can stop it. Even so, she keeps the rest going. She has to move so fast at this point that her arms are olive smudges in her battered old BDU jacket. When she stoops to get rocks, a blink is enough to miss it.

Finally she snatches the rocks out of the air in quick succession.

More than anything yet, she seems excited by this. Her reaction to blasting a rock was more subdued, more pensive. It was powerful, but...alien. It reinforced the darker side of what had happened. But this...this wasn't something bizarre and unnatural. It was just an extension of abilities she'd already had. Ash had always prided herself on being quick and sure. She'd done very well at firing range and martial arts. But now?

Now she'd be unfuckingstoppable.

She couldn't help a grin as she turned to face Courier again; a grin lacking for once its usual bitter edge and that melts away the years to a time when she was a kid, first experiencing the tantalizing joys of success.

Doug watched the rocks fly past and got a bigger and bigger grin as more of them were added. When Ash was done he clapped his hands and commented,

"Well done. There's an old saying, 'speed kills'. It was right then and it still is. We'll have to see if you can dodge bullets later. But first..."

He reached into his eufiber and pulled out a sharp knife, then handed it to Ash handle first. He said,

"...we should see how tough you are. This should be easier than normal since we do have a healer handy. Try to make a small cut on yourself."

Anna's eyes widened as she realized what Doug was about to do and came immediately closer. She knew that it was important to know how resilient Ashley was, even if Anna could heal her.

"Don't worry, I'll heal you.", she said trying to sound confident.

Ashley takes the knife, her unguarded moment quickly vanishing. She glances uneasily at Anna when she chimes in.

"Couldn't you just beat me up with a pillowcase full of doorknobs?" she tries to joke. "Then it'd be just another hazing..."

No one laughs, even her, and she nods. "Right. Okay. Here goes..."

She puts the sharp edge of the knife over the top of her arm and makes a quick slicing motion. The knife is sharp, and it leaves a line of red across her forearm...for an instant. Almost as fast as the cut is made though, blue-white light shines out through it...then vanishes. When Ash wipes the thin trail of blood off, the cut is gone.

"That didn't even hurt," she says softly. Apparently emboldened, she grits her teeth and tenses her bicep before plunging the knife tip into it...or trying to. What actually happens is that it pierces her skin, and then is forced back out by more of that light. The break in her skin instantly seals over in its wake.

Ashley hesitates, then gets a grimly determined look and glances at Anna. "Might need you in a sec here." She splays her hand against a wall and with her face squinched in anticipation of pain, stabs it squarely with the knife, using all the strength she can bring to bear.

It turns out to be enough, though just barely. Ash grimaces at the injury, but doesn't seem to be in nearly as much pain as she should be. The knife has bitten into her hand, but she's having to hold it in place to stop that energy from expelling it from her. Blood that glows like it's on fire bubbles up around the knife blade. Finally she yanks it free. The resulting wound is a deep cut in the back of her hand. Energy seethes just inside it, but it's not healing as fast...the level of injury apparently precluding that.

As Anna steps forward, Ash says, "Wait." She raises her hand to eye level and stares at the glowing hole in her flesh. A moment later, the edges of the skin knit back together, and the torn muscles seal again. Only the smudge of blood there shows there was ever an injury to begin with.

"That is some seriously crazy shit," Ashley breathes, staring hard at her hand. "It's...inside me. It's always inside me..."

Doug commented,

"Sounds more and more like you drew a useful set of cards. Let's try something else. Sit down and close your eyes and see how much you can sense of the world."

Ash didn't think she could sense anything differently, but at this point she was willing to believe just about anything. She takes a seat in a hole in the wall that had probably once been a window and closes her eyes.

After a minute she shakes her head.

"Doesn't really feel any different, except it's not dark when I close my eyes. It's like..." she waves a hand in front of her face. "Pinkish white. Still can't see though."

She opened her flashlight eyes again and looked at Courier expectantly.

Anna suddenly took a keen interest in Ashley waiting for the right moment to say something.

"I was wondering if you... can you turn that light inside out?", Anna asked a little timid as if not wanting to embarass Ashley.

(ooc: in case she does - would her light be like the suns for Anna, i.e. she can photosynthesize it?)

Doug glanced upward and said,

"Be interesting to see if you can survive in a vacuum. I could fly us up till it's a problem..." Doug smiled and continued, "...or we could just wait a few hours and see if you still need to eat. For some reason those always go hand in hand."

Doug thought for a moment and said,

"There's a number of powers that only work in contact with another nova. Draining their life force, strength, juice, copying their powers, and so forth."

"I'm going to hold out my hand, you take it, hold it for a while, then let go, then take it and let go again. Try to see if you have any extra options or possibilities."

Ashley seems...reluctant for a moment to take his hand, perhaps fearing that he means to whisk her up into space and suffocate her, but finally does as he asks.

After a moment of holding his hand, feeling a little absurd, Ash shakes her head.

"Nothing. And no offense, but I'm not really liking the idea of flying up until I choke. How about I just hold my breath?"

Without waiting for a reply, she takes a breath and holds it...and actually manages to hold it for a pretty good amount of time. But after a couple of minutes she gasps and lets it out, quickly drawing another breath.

"I think...I could probably hold it longer if I had to," she reports. "If I hyperventilated first...but not by much. No flying in space, please."

She looks around, realizing she hasn't been paying nearly enough attention to their surroundings. The city still wasn't safe! Or...maybe it is now, for me...

"Where are we going?"

(OOC: We are still on the ground )

Doug answered,

"Eventually back to the home of what passes for an Abby leader. He's personally responsible for a good deal of the suffering or at least the organization of it. He's also leading the 'destroy the rock' effort. James is a master telepath, teleport, and seriously mega-smart type. He's also big time Evil with a capital 'E'. Serious physical and mental aberrations. If it's worth doing then it's worth torturing someone into doing."

"But I think we'll teach you how to swim a bit better before sending you out with that shark. I also want you to meet Raider. He's my business partner and friend. He's the other healer we have and also super smart... and he's James' brother. What can I say, it's a small world."

(OOC - She meant 'we' as in all of us. )

Ash absorbs all that information and frowns. "Alright, alright, what's the plan of attack? I want in on this."

Doug chuckles a little bitterly and replies,

"Plan? There is no 'plan' as such right now. James is our ally. If I could take him by surprise I could just pop his head off..." Doug clenches his fist and a rock he's holding shatters then liquefies under the pressure. Doug drops the rock and continues,

"Bottom line is we need him. Kill him now and that rock exterminates mankind in a few months. So we wait and watch and learn. Find out who his friends are and what the factions are. Raider will be back in a few hours. Maybe he'll say he got rid of the rock with the old burn weapons. Maybe he'll say we don't need James any more. More likely he'll say we're still on hold waiting for things to shake out."

"Raider has already returned, Doug. He is waiting for us.", said Anna evenly. "I think he can explain better what is going on. There are things I haven't understood neither, Ashley. But Doug, Gregory and Raider are good people. I trust them."

Ashley looks away as Doug speaks, and folds her arms for a moment before putting a hand to her mouth. She stays like that until Anna's done, then for a bit longer.

"And when the comet's gone?" she asks quietly.

Doug answers,

"Then he goes down. Maybe by my hand, maybe someone else's. He strikes me as being self destructive. Wouldn't shock me if whoever else involved in this figures out he's betrayed them and takes him out first. But I won't trade the world for one man no matter how evil."

Ashley nodded slowly at that.

"Is that Raider's plan too?" she asked frankly. "He's going to let us blow away his brother once the comet's done for? You're sure?"

Doug replies,

"There's no love lost between them and they didn't grow up together. He never knew James the little boy, just James the monster. Poisoning their father, etc. Raider is also the closest thing we have to a leader. I'm not sure if he could bring himself to do it himself; He thinks so, I have my doubts."

"But it's not like he has any offensive powers anyway."

Gregory disliked the tentacles aberrant, Squiddy-James, but he was not sure if he wanted him dead. He never killed anyone, that Gregory was aware of. He did kidnap and alter KB, but she is still alive. They also took off his James's arm for that.

Of course there was that suitcase-bomb which left Gregory mangled and burned. That was a personal matter between him and Squiddy. He only wanted to fool Squiddy, like he fooled Gregory. Gregory's words would probably be unpopular, but he would say them anyways.

"James should live." Gregory said in a flat voice. "James do bad stuff. But he have a good reason. He do not deserve to die."

A smile crosses his face. "He keep hurting people then we hurt him."

Ash glances at Gregory and says, "No offense, Greg, but you don't know what you're talking about."

She looks back at Doug. "Okay, so lets meet 'Raider' and see what the situation is."