Radioactive (Mike Batista)

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

From any reasonable perspective, Nora Marie had no reason to complain about her powers. She suspected that the owners of the pharmacy down the road would soon retire to Hawaii off of the profits from all the Ibuprofen they sold to 'paths, there were the shifters who had to buy clothes in bulk, and of course the poor Gestalts. She certainly had peers with more useless powers—in the case of a nuclear apocalypse she could hypothetically be a very valuable asset to some sort of superhero team. But she was pretty sure she was the only person in the school who had to wear a lead-lined suit to training.

The bolt to the heavy training room shut with a clunk behind her. Humming a few bars of the latest song that played every dozen tracks on the radio, Nora Marie opened her locker and tossed her backpack inside. She was looking forward to this lesson, they had just started work on gauging the strength of a radioactive signal without touching the object. The prospect of developing this skill pleased her, it might finally be something vaguely useful. Mostly it meant that she'd have a sixth sense for detecting halogen lights and bananas, but whatever. She had also made significant progress on her own personal goal, which was to make a Geiger counter sing 'Happy Birthday.'

The next stop was the equipment locker. After snapping her hair back in a wimpy ponytail, she hauled free the smallest of the cold, gray, lead-lined body suits. She hated the thing, it was heavy and smelled weird and felt like she was wearing a pile of steaks. After five years she still hadn't figured out an efficient way to put the dang thing on.

Mr. Batista came in just as she got her second wrist worked through the cuff. The gloves and mask sat on the bench beside her, always left for last. “I am convinced,” she announced to her trainer, “That this suit is poisoning me. I bet it's why my acne's so bad, stuck wearing this oversized death trap. Could you do my clasps?” Years of working the zipper up her back had given her nearly double-jointed shoulders, but she always had to have someone else button on the large fabric piece that folded over the top. “I hope you've had a nice day so far. Mine's been good, Jordan nearly threw up in bio but I got a B on that quiz.”

[Mike Batista]

There were plenty of powers that were dangerous untrained, pyrokinesis coming to mind immediately and most of the mental set a close second. Then there were powers that had some pretty nasty side effects for the person but not the environment, like shapeshifting, which was hard on the body, or any other power that had a physical aspect. Over the years, some fairly substantial precautions and special rooms had been created to deal with the variety of powers flowing through. Nory was not the first meta whose powers dealt with radioactivity, but she was the first one Mike had dealt with in many years. Not that he minded; unlike a lot of his other trainees, Miss Gwinn had a great attitude and a fun personality. Mike enjoyed his time with her. She had some rather unfortunately habits, but... who didn't. At least his fields kept her from running off too often when they warmed up outside.

Before a session that required the special room, located several levels below the research center for safety, Mike always helped Nora Marie into her lead-lined suit and talked with her a bit to gage her mood and health. They'd done some walking upstairs in the gym beforehand, as he did with all his trainees. He smiled as he leaned over to check the suit closures and do up the bit she couldn't reach.

"The lead is all encased in fabric and plastic, but we can give it another wipedown if you're concerned," he said. Turning the suits inside out for cleaning was something they did twice a month at least. Not only Mike but the other researchers checked over the suits carefully to ensure no leaks, so Nory was safe from not only the materials she worked with but the lead too.

"My day's been alright. Lots of sessions, lots of whining about laps." The trainer grinned. "The usual. Good job on the quiz... but is Jordan sick?"

Picking up the gloves, he held each one out in turn so she could shove her hands in and he could connect them to the suit.

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

Nora Marie puffed a piece of hair out of her mouth, shuffled half a step forward, and began worming her hands into the gloves. "Cleaning won't help. I can just feel it," she said with her tongue between her teeth. "My zit senses are tingling." However, the suggestion of cleaning was enough to silence her on the subject, as her roommates could readily attest.

"You're one of the best trainers!" Nory smiled brightly. "So I'm glad they have you on a tight schedule, even if it means you're trying to make telepaths run laps. Obviously you just need more students in--hang on--" She paused to pull the face mask over her head, "--ughf--top physical condition, like me!"

The last words came out tinny and muffled through the speaker built into the helmet. She puffed her chest and flexed her arms in demonstration. At 5' 3" and with a physique that could politely be called petite, the effect was underwhelming, even in a giant silver bio-hazard suit. Mike knew that she had never managed more than two and a half pushups in a sitting, though she made up for it with an impressive quarter mile. In fact, other than protecting her vital organs, one of the most valuable functions of the suit was how much it slowed her down during an ill-timed lapse of attention.

Nory continued chatting as Mike did up the last of the fastenings. "Actually, we were watching a documentary about arachnids. There was a clip of a spider catching a wasp and, well, you can probably guess how it ended. Jordan was okay, I just hope the other guys don't give him crap about it."

Finally fully suited, Nory gave a chirp of approval through the speaker. "Cool! We're still doing remote sensing today, right?"

When Nora Marie had first come to Hammel, she had been shell-shocked, grief stricken, and not remotely in control of her powers. A round of immediate and intensive training, as well as a sensitive Geiger counter that she still wasn't allowed to take off, kept her from being a danger to herself and other students. Still, for many years, her training focused on developing habits to be sure that she kept her abilities off--completely off--at all times.

It was only recently that they had begun to fine-tune other aspects of her power. They had discovered early on that she could detect strong radioactive signatures if she was close enough to them. As she gained control, her perception became more acute and her radius of effect widened. The eventual goal was to be able to sense and control radiation from a distance that didn't put her at risk.

That what was written on her paperwork at least. Secretly, Nory mostly fantasized about a day when she would be able to burst into nuclear power plants just in time to stop the reactor core from melting down.

[Mike Batista]

The trainer chuckled. Nora Marie was certainly animated today. Well, she was most of the time, but it was just so nice to have a cheerful student. He knew she didn't like wiping down the suit inside, but it wasn't a hard job and it was necessary. It could be she'd have one of her own later in life, and it would do for her to know how to care for one.

He laughed again at her compliment. "I'm glad you think so. I think I'm the only trainer who insists on regular exercise, but I do think it helps."

Helping her adjust the headpiece, he anchored it on and peered in at her through the clear plastic front. Everything looked like it was working fine, and he smiled. "You're one of my best runners."

Even if some of it was running in ill-advised directions. The suit looked ready to go, and so did Nory.

"Oh, they'll rag him a little and then let it go, probably," Mike said. It was the way of friendship and teenagers. They'd probably bring it up again someday when he poked too hard at one of them, but as long as it was all in fun it'd be okay. Nora Marie ran with a decent bunch who weren't malicious and joked around a lot like family. He was glad; there were too many kids who got into trouble for things like drinking or drugs or who were irresponsibly sexually active.

"Yep!" Mike started to walk out of the locker room into the hall to the training room. "We put some samples behind walls you can sense them through. Some of the samples are big, some are tiny. To see what you can pick up."

The radioactive training room was fairly large, and along the walls were recessed boxes that pieces of radioactive materials could be placed for things like sensing or manipulating. Today, seven samples had been hidden in those recesses, and all of the several dozens of little doors were closed.

Mike went into the triple-protected viewing chamber, where four clear panes of various material separated the training room and it. It was a wall-sized window, though, so Mike could see Nory's whole body and she could see his. Mike clipped the mic to his shirt and gave it a test. It went both into Nory's helmet and the room, in case one of them failed. "Can you hear me?"

After that was finished and it was all working, he said, "There's samples behind the doors. I won't tell you how many. See if you can find them all."

He had a clipboard to mark the doors she chose. They were all numbered, so she could just tell him the numbers she though were right.

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

Nora Marie grinned through the plastic at her trainer's chuckle. She found a special pleasure in making strict, stern people laugh, though Mr. Batista was never very difficult. "Really? You think so?" The praise made her smile widen even more. Nory always responded to compliments as if they were a shining treasure she had never seen before. Particularly high or heartfelt praise had been known to make her burst into tears.

Of course, this was not an especially difficult thing to do. Nora Marie did not seem to possess the 3-7 range on the emotional scale. Most of the time, she was as indefatigably cheerful as a rubber ball. But when she wasn't cheerful, she was in paroxysms of rage or the abyss of despair. She had gotten detention before for punching a girl in the mouth who cheated on one of her friends, and on more than one occasion Mike had had to suit up and drag her out of the training room because she was crying too hard to leave. Eventually, Mike learned to let it run its course. As abruptly as her emotions shifted, they changed back just as quickly, and in half an hour she was no worse for the wear except for puffy eyes and a sheepish smile.

"Yeah, you're probably right. It was a pretty cool video though." Nory's suit crinkled and flashed in the florescent light as she slogged after her trainer. "Small ones? How small?" Nory always had trouble with little pieces, they were much harder to pick out of the static of natural ground radiation. But she supposed that was sort of the point.

She entered the main training room through a different set of doors, heavy, bomb-shelter looking ones that Mike had to open from inside the see-through room. They led into an airlock-like chamber that opened after a moment into the large, brightly-lit radiation training room. Immediately Nory felt the radioactive spike, as if she had stepped into a warm room. Mike's voice rang through the speakers. Nory gave him a double thumbs up and buzzed back, "Loud and clear! Let's find some Russian marbles! Man, you put some hot stuff in here."

Cautiously, Nory took a deep breath, relaxed her shoulders, and let her power come online. The pricks of heat in the room came into sharper focus. "Okay." She twisted her head to look around. So many little boxes, and she was standing right in the middle. "You're sure you can't tell me how many there are?"

The largest sample she found nearly immediately. "34," she said promptly. "Or maybe it's...no, it's definitely 34. Why are those two doors so close to each other?" Eh, whatever. She closed her eyes, took another deep breath, and pushed out again.

The next one was harder. At close range she could detect nearly anything, but the farther away she was the dimmer things became. She focused on her breathing and keeping her shoulders loose and tried to feel her way into the far corners. "There's one behind me..." She started rotating on the spot. "And to the left..." She narrowed her focus to one wall in the room. It kept sliding away from her. She opened one eye. "I think it's...8?"

Nory made 6 guesses in all, 3 correctly and one that was only a foot off. She had, surprisingly, latched onto one of the smallest samples on the third try, but the concentration required narrowed her focus to such an extent that she completely missed a large sample up near the ceiling. "So how'd I do?" she asked hopefully after she made her final guess. "Were there six?"

[Mike Batista]

"Sure. You're one of my best runners," Mike said honestly. Nory might've thought of herself as a rubber ball, but Mike tended to think of her more as a girl of extremes. Whatever emotion had her in its grip was turned up to ten, possibly eleven, and it was probably as exhausting as it looked. Or so he thought. Where she got all her energy from was something of a mystery. If she went into one of her soggy bouts during a session, her trainer just had her drink a few swallows of a sports drink to get her electrolytes and blood sugar back up so she could finish.

"Small enough," he said, smiling. "Remember, there's no failing here. It's all discovery, it's all learning about your limits and where they are." It was a distinction too few kids could make. There was a fine line between perceived failure and defining limits, and Mike made it a point with all his kids to keep them away from the negative end, which wasn't true either way. All test results were important, sometimes the bits that couldn't be done were of more importance than the ones that could. Of course, with kids like Nora Marie who tended to turn things into games, it was hit or miss, but at least she had fun with it and did her best.

Returning the thumbs up, Mike chuckled. "Less talking, more finding."

Watching her concentrate, occasionally the old Latino made soft comments through the comm. "Good girl, relax, there you go." Stuff like that when she seemed stressed. "Easy, easy. Take your time. Focus."

"You did great!" he said when she was done. Flicking switches on the board, he opened the six doors she'd chosen, revealing her three right answers. "You got one of the bittiest ones, and you got the big one right away. Very good." Leaving those doors open, he continued, "There are seven samples. Now I want you to get as close to the doors as you need to feel them out and see if you can't find the other four. They'll be in positions you can reach or at least touch."

None of the doors was higher than six feet up the wall, and a low riser edged the wall for anyone too short to meet the max. Mike flicked more switches, and the three samples she'd found had their doors closed and mechanisms inside the walls behind them removed the samples altogether so they wouldn't mess her up. The empty doors opened again, and tiny lights lit above the doors to mark them.

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

"Yeah!" Nory put both arms in the air, and a great rush of static from the crinkling fabric came over the speaker. She took a few steps closer to the door with the small sample and grinned when she saw the dull scrap of metal gleaming in the loader mechanism. "Man, that thing was tiny! That might be the smallest one I've managed so far." She gave Mr. Batista an air high-five from the center of the room.

Her antics paused while Mr. Batista gave the next set of instructions. She nodded. "Seven? Or four, I guess. Okay." She wiggled her fingers next to her sides while the doors clicked open, shut, and the whirring mechanisms inside came to a halt. "Four more, four more..."

She started the same way again, standing in the middle of the room and stretching out to the edges. Mr. Batista said that she could walk around, but she didn't want to move closer if she didn't have to. She was warmed up now, and found the one that she only missed by one door within a minute or two, and the larger one off the ceiling shortly after. "Seventeen! That's where that one was! I thought it was sixteen. Geez, and thirty three." She rubbed her wrist across her visor with a squeaking sound. "How the heck did I miss that? That's like the third biggest sample in here."

Now there were only two small samples left, and things became more challenging. Nory fumbled around from the center for a while, and eventually took several reluctant steps off the center podium and towards the east wall. "Okay, I'm pretty sure it's four...let me just..." Her muscles tightened as she tried to focus, and she felt a swell of nausea in her stomach. She immediately paused to listen for the beep of her counter, but heard nothing. "I think it's just regular side effects," she said into her microphone to her trainer, who she was sure had noticed her stop. "Are you getting anything?" Mr. Batista had more sophisticated monitoring equipment in his room, and he could tell if her personal radiation levels were rising at all. She didn't think so. She hadn't had a slip-up in weeks.

[Mike Batista]

Returning the air-high-five (which didn't feel as ridiculous as it first had), he let her go back to it. "Officially, it is. But I bet you can go a hair smaller than that, though we won't test that today."

Mike had a pretty good idea of where Nora Marie's ability range lay. The big end they couldn't do much with till she had more control, but the small end they were coming very close to tacking down. He watched her, glancing at the monitors in the suit and in the room as well for any spikes of danger, but it was all looking good.

He grinned at her. "Don't worry about it too much. You know that waves given off by things nearby can affect detection. And you were, and are, a bit excited. Calm down, firecracker. Easy."

She stretched out again, and then gave in and moved off the center. Good girl. There was no need to keep in one spot, she had two tiny ones left. When she froze, Mike looked at the sensors again. "There was half a blip," he returned. "So fast I would've missed it if I hadn't been looking at it. You're good. Just breathe, Nory. Take a moment. Center yourself." He smiled at her. "It's just an exercise, remember? Not a test. Nothing happens if you don't find them. All learning. No pressure. I have your favorite flavor of Gatorade when you're done."

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

Mr. Batista's words helped calm her down. He was right, it was just a training session. It had not been easy to teach a squirrely 12 year-old about neutrino emission, but they had made her sit through enough chemistry lessons that she knew not to push herself. Even small slip-ups were dangerous over time. She wanted to do well and she wanted to make Mr. Batista proud, but finding a sample from a few feet further away wasn't worth cleaning puke out of the inside of a containment suit.

Nora Marie exhaled at Mr. Batista's instructions and smiled back it him. "Okay." The nausea and his reassurance helped sober her up a bit, and she closed her eyes and took several long, deep breaths. Air hissed in and out of the filtered vents in her suit, and her queasiness began to subside. "Really?" She opened one eye. "The yellow ones?" She loved yellow Gatorade. It was her favorite after the PINK energy drinks, but after the lead ball-bearing incident Mr. Batista didn't give those to her anymore.

Nory waited until the nausea had completely faded before she tried again. She reached out for the hot, prickly spots that meant a concentrated area of radiation. But rather than tightening her focus, she took a step towards where she thought it was. The spread of heat along the wall gained definition. "Three...?" Nory took another half a step, and the spike settled into place. "I'm going with three."

One more, the smallest one. Nory turned around and gave the room a cursory scan. She couldn't pick anything out from the background static from here. "How small is the smallest one, exactly?" she asked hesitantly.

[Mike Batista]

Mr. Batista was already very proud of Nora Marie. He had some measure of pride for all his trainees. It would be unfair and inaccurate to say he had favorites, but since Miss Gwinn's arrival, he'd gotten to know her much better than he usually did his students. Part of that was how young she'd been when she'd come, part of it was the unusual nature and strength of her power, part of it was her attitude. There had been a lot to turn around, and she'd come through with flying colors.

"Yep, the yellow ones." He had both lemon-lime and lemonade flavored. Mike was careful with the supplementary drinks - making sure the kids had a deficit that the drinks would provide without excess extra sugar or salt or other ingredient that wasn't good for them. Nory could exert herself during a good session, so he wasn't too worried. But like with his other kids, he limited her to one bottle unless there was some other need.

And yes, PINK drinks had pretty much been banned from campus.

Way to go, Nory.

At her guess, Mike pressed the button that opened the door of Three, and there it was. "Good job!"

Smiling kindly at her through the glass, he said, "Roll your shoulders a little, kiddo. Remember, this is just a game. The smallest one is just a tad smaller than the bitty one you found earlier. But remember, if you can't find it, that's important too. You're defining your range. You're creating your own safeguards, and they'll let us find the best methods of using your power and keeping you in one piece. You're doing excellent, Nory. Muy buena! Keep it loose, kiddo. Yellow gatorade. Eyes on the prize."

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

Nory didn't know what she would have done without Mr. Batista. Without his hugs, his kindness and patience, dinners at his house and evenings with his foster kids, she didn't think she would have made it through her first year at Hammel. She was more grateful to the old Latino than she could say. The least she could do was try her best during training.

Nory grinned when she saw the scrap of metal sitting in the sliding drawer, and felt its signature fade away as the retractor mechanism zipped it back down to the lab. “Kay bweno!” she replied in her enthusiastic two-semester Spanish. “Uno mas...one more to go!” She rubbed the thick gloves of her suit together. Excellent! She didn't get an excellent every day. But she was doing well today; she could feel it in the tendons along her spine and the base of her collarbone. Too well to give up on the last piece without a fight.

She followed Mr. Batista's instructions carefully, shuffling her shoulders and checking her range. “Okay...okay. I think I can tell it's not anywhere up to about...62? Yeah, box 62 right now.” She tried to pinpoint the edges of her sensing without 'squinting,' as this was what usually triggered her side effects. “So it must be on the other side.” She hesitated for a moment, then began moving up the right aisle of the room rather than returning to the center pedestal. This gave her a much clearer sense of the drawers she was passing, but meant that she would have to walk the perimeter to check them all.

“Yellow gatorade, yellow gatorade...lemon lime, right?” Lemon lime was the best. She chewed her lower lip as she shuffled down the room, feeling for the tiny signature of the earlier piece she'd found. There were several false positives, but after stepping closer she dismissed each one. Finally, in one of the corners nearest to Mr. Batista's window, she nodded once and said, “I'm gonna say 70. If it's not in this one I don't think I'm going to be able to find it without getting right up against the drawers.”

[Mike Batista]

Without him, Mike was fairly sure Nory would've done alright. It just would've taken her longer to come around, but he thought she would've latched herself to someone like him. Probably Sean. Maybe Chase. Either way, Mike felt Nory's natural effervescent nature would've eventually bubbled through.

He had to laugh at her Spanish. What she lacked in technique she more than made up for in enthusiasm. "Si, uno mas, por favor."

Listening as she ruminated, Mike's face didn't give anything away, though he still kept his expression encouraging. She was on the right track. "You got it. Lemon lime. Been sitting in the fridge, so it's nice 'n cold."

Tempted to ask if that was her final answer, instead the trainer buzzed the door and showed her the little pebble of material, face breaking into a grin. "Ding ding! You got all seven! Great job!" He waved his hand in an air-five. "Go shower and I'll have your yellow Gatorade waiting."

Decontaminating after a session was surprisingly easy. Radioactivity was carried on dust particles, so a simple removal of the suit and placing it in a sealed container for washing and a light shower later, and she was fine. There was a shower in a small room off the training room to keep all the radioactive dust contained.

When she emerged, as promised, a perfectly chilled 16 oz yellow Gatorade. Drink of Champions. Looking over her, for tense muscles or extra red skin, Mike grinned at her. "Good work today! How you feeling?"

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

"Si!" Nory's face brightened underneath the heavy hood. "Agua de lima ee limon. Agua frio...kay deliciosa..." she mused to herself as she hunted. She had only started formally taking Spanish last year (after her trumpet lessons got rescheduled), but they didn't get to practice much in class and she enjoyed stumbling through her vocabulary with Mr. Batista. She still had a long way to go, but her accent was improving rapidly.

Excitement brought her back to her native tongue, and she spun on the spot to face Mr. Batista and threw him an air high-five. "Awesome! I can't believe I found those things, they were tiny!" She leaned forward to inspect the sliver of ore. "Couple microsieverts, maybe?" This close, she recognized the more characteristic pulse and spike of what she thought was uranium alloy. "Uranium? Cool! Maybe we can even start on the bigger stuff soon!"

Her success carried her into the showers with a spring in her step, or as much of a spring as you can have in a lead-lined suit. Special latches allowed it to be undone from the inside, and she peeled the thing off and wrestled it into the hanging sealed bag before stepping gratefully into the shower.

A few minutes later, she appeared back in the training room rustling a towel through her damp hair. She grinned when she saw the dewy, fluorescent-yellow vessel of hydration. "Yesss!" She plopped down on the bench and took a long, satisfied drink. "Totally worth it," she said with a sigh.

Her drink half finished, Nory pushed up her shirt sleeves so Mr. Batista could see the eczema along her hands and elbows. It still flared up at random times, but now that she remembered to put her lotion on more than once a week her skin wasn't nearly as bad. The sensitive area under her jaw was rather red, but that was normal after an extended session in the suit, and her shoulders were lose. "I feel pretty good," she said as she took another sip of her drink. "I got a little nausea in there at the halfway point, but I waited it out and was more careful and it didn't come back."

[Mike Batista]

"Agua would be stretching it," he laughed. "Try 'refresco'. It's the word for... recreational non-alcoholic drinks, I guess you could say, that aren't sodas." It was sort of hard to classify what exactly Gatorade was in any language, and Mike felt calling it a 'sports drink' was not only misleading but rather dangerous. The salt and sugar in most of those so called beverages often ran in high excess of what a great many people required after physical exertion. Metas were an exception (as they always were), but as it was, yellow Gatorade was still a treat.

As always, Nory's enthusiasm was heartening, even if it meant her trainer kept certain facts from her. Like how one could actually buy Uranium on Amazon... which was where the bits behind the doors had come from.

He chuckled when she scored her drink. "Glad you think so."

Sleeves up, he leaned in to inspect her arms. They looked good, for Nory. "Remember your lotion tonight." Checking her chin, he said, "Maybe getting a chin guard would help with that. Smear some neosporin on it that, if it bleeds too much, okay? Don't wanna get it infected."

Smiling at her prognosis, he patted her on the back. "Good! I could tell you have some trouble, but you're learning! Just remember to take your time. Even if you're not in training, taking your time and getting it right the first time is a lot easier and time consuming than misfiring over and over because you get the jiggles." Power control was not too much of a problem with Nora Marie; instead it had more to do with patience and mood control. Crouching, he checked her geiger counter. Good, good. "Since you did have a touch of nausea, be careful at dinner tonight. Eat a little slower. Don't want you to 'Jordan', right?"

Fondly, he ruffled her still damp hair. "Well, that's it for today. Good session, Ms. Gwinn. See you later."

Taking up his notes, he gave her a wave and went off to his next appointment.

[END]