Super Boom (OPEN!)

[Idalia Tsavaris]

Whether or not anyone liked to admit it. No one had more literature devoted to meta-human related weather events and Hammel. With an obnoxious visitor's badge taped to her chest with a handwritten 'Idalia Tsavaris' scrawled on it Ida took herself and her materials and settled onto an open table. It was sad that this was indeed where she was spending her day off. She dropped her bag to the ground and with a swift motion swung her hair into a neat and tight bun. She couldn't stand it bothering her neck when she was working. The new research required her to look at what has already been worked on adn as she searched the database that the Weather Service had as well as Hammel's she found that if she wanted to do anything she was going to have to do it at Hammel. She didn't have permission at the University of Vermont to be able to use their archives. So Hammel it was.

There was a poor amount of papers written on the affects of meta humans on the weather, however this was a great opportunity for Idalia. She didn't have enough papers to her name to gain any sort of respect at the conferences. Her peers from college had already published a great number and keeping up with them Idalia felt as though she were falling behind. To get a start she was working on finding anything that would give a way to measure and account for meta-human activity in any form of physical processes. This could be something like using a telekinetic or a terrakinetic to alter the seismic activity. Or a someone who had lightning in their fingertips and a weather manipulator in weather. There were so many variables that she needed to account for. It was going to take forever and she needed to find a focus. She couldn't account for everything she needed to restrict herself to weather manipulators.

She plugged her computer in and opened it logging into her work server without even thinking about it. Taking a sip from the coffee travel mug she had placed at hand she logged into her email and logged into the database. This table had not been chosen at random, the few Journals were on the shelves behind her and she was looking for what Journals might have what she needed. Most of the Meta-human Journals were very much biological or psychological. All of that when flying over her head. No she needed something she could plug into a formula. Ah-ha! She needed to look into the small changes in weather and how it propagated throughout the system. Historical archives! She went into her terminal and manipulated it to a new directory and prepared to attach the Weather Services archives. With that she rose to her feet and.... And she smelled lightning.

She sat down abruptly and let it come. The library vanished from her vision and she was on the shore of the lake. Oh no. The water churned as the wind whipped around the lake. The towering cell overhead came out of nowhere and as lightning laced across the sky she saw them. There were out there and they were going to die! She gasped for air as the rain tried to drown her and she wanted so badly to go to them. She blinked and the library returned and she found herself gripping the arm of the chair and gasping for air. Shit. It was going to happen. This was a repeat, it was going to be big. A earth shattering crash echoed and Idalia let out an indignant shriek. She flew to the window ignoring the fact that she was probably going to be kicked out. It took her a moment to realize that she had forecasted this yesterday. It wasn't supposed to be a powerful squall. A small cold front heading through. They'd predicted it. Anyone could see it coming. In her vision it was sudden. It didn't help though that a killer storm vision came in tandem with a potentially severe cell.

[Jace Murphy]

Rain fell in sheets around Jace as she headed for the library. She had some books due back, so unfortunately she was unable to enjoy the weather. As she walked, she traced delicate lacework through the water, exultant laughter building in her throat the way it always did when she played with her power. Halfway across campus, the first wave of dizziness hit her mid-stride. She stumbled, catching herself on one knee.

"Typical," she snorted, pushing herself to her feet again. Thoroughly chastised by her own power, she meandered the rest of the way to the library. She stopped a few times to calm the building disorientation in her vision and ended up leaning heavily against the library door for a few minutes before she could stagger inside. Not that she minded sitting in the rain, she just didn't want to owe money for damaged books.

The rain ran down her bare arms, and she reveled in the feel of it between her toes. Taking a deep breath, she concentrated on the shape of the water and collected it in small bubbles around her palms. A sharp stab of pain between her eyes reminded her that she was at her limit for the moment. She ruffled her hair, letting the water fall away from her hands into her tangled locks.

Hiking her bag up over her slippery shoulders, she trudged past the check out counter toward the drop-off slot. The books on deep sea life landed in the return bin with a satisfying 'thunk' and Jace bit back a sigh. She still wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do. She'd jokingly told Robby she'd just become a professional mermaid the other day and he'd just laughed uncontrollably for a few minutes.

A loud scream jolted her from her thoughts. She glanced around, but saw no one rushing to anyone's aid. Taking it upon herself to act, she headed in the direction of the noise and found a woman pressed against one of the windows in the reference section. She seemed upset, but unharmed. With all of the meta-humans in the vicinity, she was probably reacting to something her power was triggering.

"Um...excuse me, Miss?" she called quietly. She approached slowly with her hands out in front of her, fingers spread. "Did you just scream? Are you alright?"

[Idalia Tsavaris]

Most people didn’t like rainy weather too much, Idalia had her days. Sometimes she loved watched the rain storms rush in from the west and she loved the way she could feel the pressure change as a storm approached with a roar or even more subtly with a whisper. Rainy days (when she wasn’t working) were usually spent at home with a hot cup of cocoa and a book under blankets and snuggling with her oversized puppy. Well, now she would have a little bit more to read. There were so many articles and so little times to read all of them. At least after she did a little bit of sifting the literature became significantly less. Though she had to go into a lot of psychological journals to get meta-human reactions and their influence on powers. Psychological journals were a whole different breed of creatures. Atmospheric stuff she got, but the brain and even worse the mysterious mind was incomprehensible. She'd taken a few philosophy classes, but all she'd realized was that it was endlessly frustrated to try to justify the fact that she existed.

Idalia’s eyes traced the contours of the clouds as the flashes of lightning illuminated them. It took her breath away every time. It was starting to get darker and the wind pressed the rain against the window making the old glass rattle. She felt chills, the temperature was dropping, probably from the cold front headed through. It was far too early for her to be mourning the passing of summer, but this was Vermont and it was a balmy 68 and soon it would be winter and the whole landscape would be painted white. It was moments like this when she wondered why she hadn’t moved to Florida. Ida didn’t notice the people milling about in the library and she started a bit when someone called her attention. She caught sight of the young lady and immediately did a quick glance around to make sure she was indeed the one being spoken too.

A hand flew to Idalia’s lips and she blushed a furious red. “Oh dear, I’m sorry I suppose I did. I’m sorry.” She glanced around to see if she was getting any other glared now. “No, no, everything’s fine, I was just… startled. I didn’t disturb you did I?” She said in a much more hushed voice. Suddenly she realized that they were indeed in a library and she was going to be kicked out if she decided to let herself break out again. Idalia looked the girl over and realized suddenly that she was soaked from head to toe. “Oh no, did you get caught in the storm?” She asked and the question was punctuated by a close strike and a rumble that rattled the books on the shelves. It was a good thing that the girl got in when she did. Ida glanced back out the window, it was starting to pick up and she could see the trees whipping as the air got more murky with the storm. It must have risen rather high to blot out the sun as it did.

[Jace Murphy]

The woman seemed completely mesmerized with the sky while Jace approached. She didn't see anything special about it other than the welcome rain that had been missing for a week or so. Jace cocked her head and peered out the window, wrinkling her nose at the first flash of lightning. Well, no more fun to be had out there for a while. She'd learned her lesson at the age of twelve, playing around in a thunderstorm with her cousin Robby. Lightning hit a telephone pole close enough that there was no pause between its flash and the crack of thunder that nearly knocked her to her knees. It was definitely not an experience she cared to have again, especially not after the lengthy lecture she'd received from her mother just for playing in the storm. She knew nothing about the lightning strike, but Robby's stories almost ratted them out a few times. Those were even worse. With each telling the strike got closer and closer until she was surprised he wasn't telling people they got hit.

When the woman finally turned, Jace stopped, trying to read her face. Mostly she saw embarrassment. She shrugged and pushed her hair out of her face. It stuck to her neck, and she had to resist the urge to wring it out on the carpet. She loved to feel connected to water, but sometimes walking around like a wet mop got old. She compromised by gathering it up into a messy bun on top of her head. Some of the water clung to her fingertips when she was finished, creating a delicate arc of water from her scalp to her hands.

"Nothing to be sorry about. At least not to me." She glanced around at their fellow library goers. None seemed particularly upset, though a few tables over a man with curly honey-colored hair frowned fiercely at his work. "I was dropping off some books, so I just got here."

She glanced forlornly out the window after the lightning strike. Free of her library books, she'd been hoping to sit out by the pond until the rain let up. So lost was she in her daydreams about laying in wet grass that she almost missed the woman's concerned question.

"Oh no," she said, grinning sheepishly. "I'm a student here. I usually wait for weather like this to go outside. I don't think the librarian appreciates it too much. I always bring back soggy books."

Another crash of thunder made her wince. She took off her now-empty book bag and dropped it onto the table across from an open laptop. "Guess I'm stuck here for now, though. One thing my mom taught me was to stay in when there's lightning. Apparently I have a great-great-aunt or something who got electrocuted playing around in weather like this, and if it happened once, it will of course happen to me. If she ever found out I almost got zapped when I was in middle school, I'd never hear the end of it."

Jace blamed her brothers, mostly. They were strong, independent adults by the time Jace was old enough to get into any trouble. Unfortunately her parents were used to foiling the mischief of two boys, so by the time Jace was old enough to get into trouble they had a smoothly worked out system for foiling any attempt at fun. It wasn't like she had anyone to get into trouble with anyways.

(spotted a continuity error that I had to fix, sorry!)

[Idalia Tsavaris]

No matter how much she strove to understand the atmosphere there were still things that took her and her fellow meteorologists by surprise. Usually after the fact looking at the archived data it was clear what happened but it was still easy to miss. They were human, and well computer models were hit or miss. Storms like this still took her breath away and she could no more keep herself from stopping and watching that she could stop breathing. Sometimes she wondered if she would like to do something else with her life, like her power forced her into this career. But then it hadn’t started with her power, she’d always been in awe of the power that the earth held. It was unbelievable and still sometimes she remembered the quotes from her old professors that had made her gasp in shock.

Idalia watched the girl and smiled. She didn’t have the sour look of someone who had indeed gotten caught out in a storm, but she was practically dripping. Something about the way the water seemed to cling to her and move around her fascinated Idalia. Ida wondered if she had some power dealing with water. She was immediately jealous. Of all of the powers she could have had she had to get the single most useless one. Well, that was unfair. Her visions were very useful but her forecasts were not even 100%. If they were she’d be much better off in her career, but alas the weather sometimes just does what it wants without any regard to physics. Idalia followed the girl’s gaze to the older man and stifled a giggle wither her hand. “Well, I should be quiet either way. What were you reading?” Idalia asked wondering if she was the type of girl who liked those terrible excuses for literature they are passing off these days or if she was reading something else.

It was a pathetic moments when meteorologists forgot their umbrellas, which unfortunately was something that happened more than any of them liked to admit. Idalia normally didn’t mind the rain all that much, unless she had her laptop or any other form of documents that could be ruined by the rain. Then she was the grumpiest person in the universe. So she was endlessly impressed that this girl seemed very content with her current moist state. Hell, it got too humid and Idalia complained. Something about having her power, she could love the weather but she couldn’t do anything to change it to stop it from being so unpleasant.

“Oh really?” Idalia exclaimed her head snapping to the girl in shock. “You wait for the rain to go outside? Why’s that?” Ida was fascinated by people, she should ask Evan if he wanted to do a joint study. Then at least he could read the psychology papers and she wouldn’t have too. The meteorologist nodded firmly. “You’re mom taught you well. I tell you what, if you can hear thunder at all, you can be struck by lightning.” Idalia nearly grabbed her pen and started writing notes. “Really? How close was it? What was it like?” She asked more excited than a normal person should be about someone almost being struck by lightning. Ida had never known anyone who had actually gotten struck but she knew plenty of people who were chasers who had gotten awfully close.

[Jace Murphy]

Jace dropped into a seat across from the laptop and leaned in back onto two legs. Curly-head looked calmer now, but as she watched him out of the corner of her eye she caught him looking over every few minutes or so. She couldn’t tell if he was looking at them or out the window, but she refrained from putting her feet up on a spare chair just in case it was the former. She dropped all of the legs on the floor and sighed, leaning on her hands. Hopefully the storm would be over quickly. She did have homework to finish. She tried to fold herself into the chair, but her knees stuck out like cricket legs. With a grimace, she dropped her feet to the floor. The air conditioning was helping her dry, but it was also giving her the shivers. She listened to woman’s question with mild interest.

“I’ve been looking up looking up marine biology lately,” she answered, shrugging. “We’ve been taking those career aptitude tests and getting the college application talks lately. I don’t really know what I want to do, but I know I want to do something with the water. My mom owns the aquarium store, but I don’t want to do anything boring like that. My dad suggested fish.”

“I’m a hydrokinetic,” she explained, “I’d rather be outside when it’s wet than sweating. It’s also easier for me to play around that way. I’m not very good at it, so I have to be touching water to…”
She reached out and touched the puddle of water her book bag left on the table. Concentrating on the tension in the water, she pulled her hand back, creating a small cube of rainwater on the table beneath her index finger. She looked up, grinning. She smashed her hand onto the cube, letting the puddle spider away from her and dangerously close to the laptop.

“Oh crap!” she hissed. Quickly, she drew the water back over her hand and a sudden wave of dizziness hit her. She pressed the heel of her free hand to the bridge of her nose and chuckled. “Oops. What do you do?”

Jace tried not to roll her eyes when the woman echoed her mother’s concerns, partly because the movement made her head ache. The woman’s enthusiasm was catching as she animatedly asked about the lightning strike. The look in her eye when she started asking about the lightning strike was almost manic. It reminded Jace of the way her older brother, Thomas got when he explained some program he’d constructed on his computer. She used to listen to him in awe at the dinner table before he transferred to a four-year school.

“It was kind of terrifying,” she said with a weak smile. “It was just really bright and really loud. I had…what’s that thing called when you look at the sun? And there’s like…the blue circle in front of your face for a while? I had that for a while. And the thunder was almost at the exact same time. I ended up having to drag Robby—that’s my cousin, by the way—I had to drag him back to my aunt’s house.”

[Idalia Tsavaris]

Idalia watched the girl and took a glance at laptop which was sitting open nearby. She had to admit the closeness of a moist girl to it was making her highly nervous. Her life was on that computer. Well, maybe not her life, but it was rather precious to her. It was what kept her sane some days, though Ike did make rather good conversation. He was a very good listener which allowed Idalia to just unload all of her stresses without someone talking back and making her see the other side of the argument. As logical as it was sometimes it really annoyed Ida when all she wanted to do was rant her lungs sore and her chosen target of her unloading decided to tell her about how the other party might feel. Usually Idalia realized eventually that there was some part of truth in that. But there were also times when she was especially angry when all she wanted to do was yell about how terrible someone was.

Nodding along, Idalia remembered those. “Oh are you graduating this year?” Idalia asked with interest. She didn’t seem as stressed as Ida had been when she had been applying for colleges. And don’t even get her started on the graduate school process. “Ah, marine biology is very cool, I’ve always loved water too, I just chose to look at the atmospheric form.” She laughed lightly and looked back out the window and took a slow breath as the lightning lit the courtyard as if it were day for a flicker of a second before leaving her blind and deaf from the bellow of thunder. Yes, she was a fool for thinking that she would ever want to do something else. She loved weather far too much to ever think about anything else. While she was skilled at programming she hated it more than running. And she hated running a fair amount.

Idalia’s ears perked. Well, this was a stroke of luck! Maybe not exactly what she was looking for but perhaps she could see how much this girl had an effect on the rain. “A hydrokinetic?” Idalia said turning and taking the seat across from her shifting her laptop so that she could see the girl. “That must be very cool!” Idalia said swallowing a pang of jealousy. “So, you have to touch it, but do you have any… AH!” Idalia yelped snatching her life’s work away from the trail of water. Her poor laptop, it’s life just flashed in front of Ida’s eyes. “No, no, it’s fine. Everything’s fine.” Idalia said and placed her laptop a fair distance away. She waved her finger over the mousepad and quickly typed in her password. Immediately a circle of radar filled the screen. It showed the squall line that was currently barreling through. To her relief a look to the lake and the worst of the weather had passed.

“I’m a meteorologist. So that,” she pointed toward the window, “is what I do.” She grinned at the girl. Idalia wondered if the girl had any idea about the weather, or if she would be willing to volunteer for a few experiments. “Oh I bet, the closest I’ve ever been was when I was in college and we got caught in a storm out on a boat. Now that was scary, I bet you were blinking that away for a long time.” Idalia honestly knew how terrifying that was. It was even more terrifying that meteorologists didn’t have a good grasp on lightning. “I’m Idalia by the way,” Ida held out her hand. “So as far as your power, would you like to maybe do something with oceanography?”

[Jace Murphy]

Wrinkling her nose, Jace shook her head. “We had to take one of those career aptitude tests for class. I don’t know, to make us depressed or something. My dad’s been bugging me about thinking about schools. ‘You can never start to early.’ I’m just a sophomore.”

She rolled her eyes, but still she’d spent the past few days reading up on marine biology. Fish and invertebrates. It was definitely interesting, but so was swimming long distance for that matter. She wanted to follow Thomas’ idea of getting out of Pilot Ridge eventually. There were so many places to see! She nodded at the woman’s words, rubbing the heel of her hand over her eye to try and relieve some of the pressure in her sinuses. The woman had a look on her face a little like a cat watching a bird through a window. Thomas got that look a lot. Jace called it his "Scientist Face" behind his back.

The woman’s reaction to her near miss with the laptop took her by surprise. She sat up a little and used the hem of her shirt to mop up most of the rest of the water. Her head was really killing her after that last trick and she didn’t want to push her luck. Lord knows what would happen if she staggered back to her dorm partly incapacitated by power side effects. She’d never hear the end of it.

“Meteorology?” Jace sat up and looked over her shoulder out the window. She turned back to the woman, grinning. “Can you control the weather?"

“Oh! I’m Jace. Right. Nice to meet you!” She reached out and shook the woman’s hand after hastily trying to dry it on her mostly damp clothing.

She shrugged at the mention of oceanography. She’d looked it up, but it seemed like an awful lot of Jace’s least favorite subject—mathematics. Though it would probably help her learn to control her power more, learning the properties that made the ocean behave the way it did. Still, she was just afraid enough of long equations to push that option to the bottom of her list. In fact, she should’ve brought her Geometry text book with her to study.

“I’m not smart enough for oceanography,” she concluded out loud.

[Idalia Tsavaris]

Ida laughed her eyes crinkling with her knowing smile. Oh the aptitude test. “You’re only a sophomore?! Give yourself a break! You’ve got far too long to be thinking about colleges yet.” Idalia shook her head. “And don’t you pay any mind to those aptitude tests. They don’t know anything. Hell, it told me I should be a doctor. I can’t stand the sight of blood!” Idalia laughed to herself remembering how she and her friends had laughed. “No, no, you can do whatever you want, don’t let some stupid test tell you what you can and cannot do.” It was interesting though because it fueled a certain amount of imagination. Not everyone had a good idea of what they wanted to do when they went to college. Idalia had friends who she thought were going eternal students who changed their major so many times they were practically doing something new every semester.

It was the laptop that had her career on it. It just reminded her that she should do a back up and transfer a lot of it back onto her jump drives and server accounts. But the fact that this machine held most of her articles and reviews she did not want to lose. She took a breath and nodded to the girl thanking her for her efforts at drying with her shirt. Idalia wondered if she should apologize for her mini-heart attack and thought better of it as the situation was already done and gone. If she didn’t always have so much technology at hand she’d be much more pleasant about being caught in the rain. Of course there was that time she had to get a new phone because it had gone swimming with her when her vision decided to become real at the lake. At least no one had heard about the crazy meteorologist jumping into the lake.

Giving a small smile Idalia shook her head. “Sorry, honey, I don’t have that kind of power,” Idalia informed her, “I have a very… specific form of precognition. But what I wouldn’t give for that of power. It’s very dangerous though… I’m actually working on a project now that would examining the amount of influence that meta humans like weather manipulators might have on the large scale weather systems and…” Idalia cut herself off realizing that she was doing that thing where she got really into a project description with someone who either didn’t care or didn’t know enough about the topic to get as excited as she was. “Sorry, I got a little carried away. But you said you are a hydrokinetic right? Tell me, what is the scope of your power?”

“Pleasure, Jace.” Idalia smiled and didn’t mind the moisture rather just rubbed her fingers together feeling it and making sure she knew it was there. Idalia wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Don’t say that, I took a few oceanography classes in college and they were really fun. And I bet with your power you already know a lot of the mechanics.” Idalia had always loved talking to students. They were still young and their imaginations were still full and so interesting. Teaching had always been a backup plan of hers and she was always very tempted to go back and get into academia. Though she still had a doubt in her ability to make sure that students understood her. Sometimes she got really excited and didn’t realize that she should be speaking in leman’s terms. That wasn’t because the people she spoke to weren’t intelligent. No, she’d be far too arrogant if she assumed that. No, it was just a difference of expertise. It would be the same as if someone were trying to tell her about well, biology, it would be so far over her head she’d probably give up well in the beginning.

[Jace Murphy]

Jace shot Idalia a sheepish grin from her seat. She’d pretty much come to that conclusion, especially after hanging out with Haley for a little while. The idea of disappointing her dad kept her from quitting completely, though. “I guess you’re right,” she sighed. She just couldn’t wait to get out of Pilot Ridge. It wasn’t a terrible place by any means, but she had the itch to roam. She studied Idalia for a moment, trying to picture the woman as a doctor. She knew nothing about the woman outside of her current career, so she found it hard to picture.

“I guess I know at the very least I want to do something with water,” she continued with a shrug. She eyed the laptop again, thankful that she didn’t accidentally destroy the woman’s important equipment. Trying to hide her disappointment at finding out Idalia couldn’t manipulate weather, Jace nodded thoughtfully at the description of her study. It would’ve been a cool power to see. She could remember growing up watching her mother create delicate water sculptures to unwind at the end of a long day before returning them to the small fountain that sat on their kitchen counter. Jace hoped that someday she’d be able to match her mother’s ability, but for now she struggled with making a ripple in a pool without touching it. Once she’d attempted to mimic her mother’s sculptures in one of the training rooms and ended up shattering the glass bowl she borrowed from her former roommate.

“I’m not very good at it, yet,” Jace said, in reference to her power. “Right now I can change the shape of water when I’m touching it, and the flow of it, too. Like…in a pool, I can make one of the lanes much faster than another one.”

She flushed, remembering when the Hammel official showed up on their doorstep and exposing her cheating to her parents. “I actually ended up at Hammel because of that part. I used to do that to win swimming races and someone took notice. When I get in the water, I just kind of know it. I can feel where it starts and where it ends. And if there’s any sort of flow I can feel that too. But like…in my head? My brain knows all that, I can’t really feel it like I can feel the table. Like I can feel my hand?”

She struggled for descriptive terms, but couldn’t quite put it into words. She knew the water she touched the way she knew that she had all of her limbs. Her brain acknowledged it and adopted it as another body part almost. It was that part that made it so easy for her to manipulate the pool currents and swim at the same time. She did it almost unconsciously. Afterward, though, she’d spend an hour or so puking when the nausea hit her and the intensity of the headaches crippled her for the rest of the day. Usually she wasn’t fully recovered until a few days later. Smaller manipulations just made her a little disoriented and gave her a headache ironically similar to a dehydration headache.

“You can see the future? Is that why you screamed earlier? Did you see something bad? Is there gonna be a huge storm?”

(so sorry, Iz! Here you go!)

[Idalia Tsavaris]

((haha no worries Az!))

Idalia reached out and patted Jace’s hand. “You just keep doing what you’re doing and life will fall into place.” Ida took back her hand and pointed at Jace and gave her a stern look. “But don’t you ever let someone tell you, ‘you can’t do it’ because it’s not up to them.” Idalia had had a long list of back up plans following her graduation from undergrad and she had been more than prepared to pursue a few of them if she didn’t get into graduate school. Well, luckily she had and she was here with a profession that she loved. There had been so many times throughout her life where she wanted to give up and she was always glad that she never let even her own mind tell her that she could do it. When things got hard the easy thing was to give up, but the more rewarding thing was the surge forward and claw your way through the barbed wire because the sun shone on the other side.

“Well, there you go,” she said with a smile, “There are so many things that you can do with that.” Idalia smiled, why did everyone have a cooler power than she did? Oh well, she looked out the window and smiled. In her opinion she had the coolest job. The most frequent response to her career announcement was one of surprise and then intense curiosity, the second most frequent was the joking. In their defense forecasting was a lot more difficult than is seemed. Even with her power Idalia was still wrong. When a forecast gets completely blown part of the joy is the mystery of discovering what went wrong and how it could be fixed. Which was why Idalia was here now. Models could not account for random events of emotion or pockets where people wanted it to be sunny. But maybe when these patterns appeared in the observations they could account for them down the line.

Idalia listened and nodded along with her story. Jace was young she would get better with practice. Idalia had and she’d seen a few of her sisters do so as well. A few of them had elemental powers and they too had problems in the beginning. But they had all gotten along fairly well. Idalia was sure that Jace would as well. Ida put a hand over her lips to hide her smile. She would have loved that. “I see, it’s more of intuition and knowing than anything else. Maybe that’s where your power is, maybe you’re more of a current person. But I hope you’ve learned to control that,” Idalia raised a stern eyebrow, “I used to swim in high school and I do remember how much fun that was. I hope you’re still swimming?” That was such an interesting thing. She wondered if aerokinesis people were like that. Could they feet the change in the wind after a front or in a cyclone?

Idalia nodded and blushed. “Oh dear, yeah, about that. Sometime if the weather condition persists I see it while it’s happening only a little while down the road but… hmm, here let me show you.” She went to her laptop and pulled up the National Weather Service radar image. “Here is where we are, just about,” she pointed at a mass of red on the radar image a little south of Burlington. She didn’t want to talk about the monster storm due to hit the lake in the unknown future, mostly because she didn’t know when it would happen. Ida bent the truth a bit. “So I had my vision and I thought I had a little more lead time so when I heard it, it startled me.” she laughed a little, “But this one’s not too big, see? It’ll probably move out soon enough, but it’ll probably be raining most of the day.” Idalia giggled, “Which I don’t think you’ll be upset about.”

[Jace Murphy]

“I don’t take ‘no’ very well,” Jace admitted upon hearing Idalia’s advice. Being told she couldn’t do something was more likely to spur her on to try harder. She had a lot to live up to with her successful brothers looming over her. A smile passed over her face as she thought of the trees she’d climbed because Thomas told her she wasn’t big enough or strong enough to climb. She felt a pang when she thought of the younger of her brothers. For a brief, bright time in her life he’d been the teacher and brother that she’d wanted. But then he moved away too, and like David he’d become practically a figment of her imagination.

The prospect of the future scared Jace. She heard her parents complain often enough to know that things weren’t really ideal for moving up in the world. And she knew from her brief research that doing research didn’t necessarily pay a lot at all. But like her father always said, ‘Find what you love to do and find someone to pay you to do it.’ She just hoped she could someday. If she ever figured out what she actually wanted to
do.

“I have,” she said sheepishly, thinking of the times she’d cheated to win races. Swimming was the one thing she still loved to do from before Hammel. Recreationally of course. “You swam? That’s awesome. I don’t really swim competitively anymore. I don’t want to worry about having to prove I didn’t do anything…and I don’t know if I could resist the urge to go faster. I just do it to clear my head now, I guess.”

When Idalia booted up her computer, Jace dragged her chair around to look over her shoulder. A page with a typical weather map popped up and she started planning the rest of her day around the welcoming blob of rain that covered their area of the state. "So how does all of that work?" she asked, gesturing at the map.

She looked at Idalia out of the corner of her eye, trying to picture what it must be like to see things in the future. It must have been a scary experience growing up, not knowing what it meant to see things that hadn’t happened yet.

Her headache seemed to have disappeared. She rubbed her forehead absently. At least she’d be able to have some fun later. She’d probably be paying for it tomorrow.

[Idalia Tsavaris]

Idalia smiled, she was already proud of this little girl. She looked like someone unwilling to let anyone or anything stop her. “That’s the right attitude.” Oh yes, the feminist in Idalia approved. She loved nothing more than to prove that she could do something just as well, if not better than the boys. That is, something that wasn’t cooking or cleaning. She loved cooking but the minute someone told her to get into the kitchen she’d go and retrieve a weapon. Then there would be a hostage doing the cooking under her careful eye. Many people over the year had said that phrase to her and some were friends who were joking and knew well enough that if they didn’t deliver pleas of forgiveness and possibly chocolate they were in a lot of trouble. Then there were people who said it in a serious tone who Idalia politely told where to go and then ignored them, people like that weren’t worth her time.

The future was a scary place, it oftentimes came too quickly and far to unexpectedly. It was always unclear about where the future would take one. And there were those moments that were unexpected, such as getting laid off or not getting into a graduate college. Things rose up every day to spoil well laid plans. Idalia smiled, being called back to the conversation and nodding at the girl. Idalia smiled, “Good, I’m glad.” People were so stuck on the pasts sometimes that they forgot to praise people for the changes that they had made to get to where they are today. Today Idalia trusted that Jace wouldn’t cheat at swimming anymore. She nodded and gave a smile. “Well, so long as you’re still swimming, it doesn’t matter if you’re competing. So long as you’re doing it.” Idalia leaned forward a bit, “You know what you should do, you should go swim and instead of not doing that, you should see how fast you can get up to, just for fun.”

“The radar?” Idalia asked, “Hmmm.” She paused and tapped her finger on her lips. How could she explain this? It was complicated even for Ida to understand, but the basics were pretty much self explanatory she should be able to explain it in leyman’s that both she and Jace would understand. She had friends who did extensive work on radar and Idalia could never hope to know as much as they did on that topic. “Okay see this point here?” She pointed to the middle of the circle, “That’s the Burlington radar, it sweeping in a circle. It does it in a lot of different levels. It’s essentially a waves gets sent out and what gets back tells you what’s happening. So here this is seeing rain.” She pointed to the blob on the radar, “So this is reflecting off of the rain droplets and letting us know how heady the rain is.”

Idalia was prone to rambling and especially if someone asked her a question like that. “Then it’s compiled onto these maps, it’s really nice because most people look at this, which is the rain but there’s also this,” she clicked on the parameter to change it to velocity and the colors changed and the areas changed. “So this shows the wind and how the particles are being blown. This is toward the radar,” she pointed at the green, “and this is away from the radar,” she pointed at the red. “What this can tell us is if there is a tornado or something like that in the area. Currently we have nothing like that.” A rumble of thunder echoed her words outside. The storm was just spitting, it was not as impressive as it was pretending to be. Now Ida wouldn’t be the one to say it wasn’t magnificent but compared to some of the ones she’d seen this was a baby storm. It had potential to grown if the conditions were right or if a meta human got ahold of it.