Thread Roulette: LC and Germaine

[Event !]

Some people are easily intimidated, others, not so much.

[Germaine Sharpe]

Snow. Why did it have to snow in November? It wasn't fair. Not for Gerri at least, who detested the very existance of the fluffy white that coated the ground outside. It meant that winter was on its way, and that was her least favorite season. What was worse, it meant the end of outdoor soccer until the big snowmelt in spring. Yes, snow was an evil thing.

Such a bother it was that she couldn't play soccer outside anymore. The teen was reluctant to except that fact at first. She certainly tried to play, but the ball kept getting stuck in drifts, and she tripped every time she attempted to kick it out of them. Being a stubborn little thing, it took a while before Gerri gave in to the will of mother nature and moved her games inside.

After pissing off her roommates once or twice by almost breaking the t.v, and receiving a few complaints about all the noise, she eventually moved her practices to the gymnasium. The facility was built for basketball, but she didn't care. Gerri had taken up kicking her soccer ball at the hoops, because if anything would prove her accuracy, it would be her ability to get them through the elevated basketball hoops. She had yet to succeed of course, but she was still determined to make it work.

[L.C. Milliner]

Despite being thin as a rail and looking like she was destined to forever be picked last in a game involving any sort of team effort, L.C. was very physically fit. Did that mean she was jumping at the chance to be in any sort of sporting competition or team? No, of course not. If anything, it allowed her to be the best at running off or giving someone a good kick in the ass before running off. Being physically fit was actually sort of an accident, to be honest. It was because her power was a physical one, so her training involved a lot of physical activity. At first, she hated it, but her stubbornness and inability to back down from a challenge allowed her to get better at what she did. Couple that with her dislike for being picked on, and come gym class, she had stayed in a comfortable upper-middle position among the students rankings. She could do a push up, but not the most out of everyone. Call her lazy or call her a teenager, but she wasn’t into strenuous physical activity.

There were times, however, when physical activity helped L.C. out whether she liked it or not. Her trainers constantly told her that, instead of taking her power out on something (or someone) she should do something else when she had the urge to cause some damage. With that in mind, the girl had shuffled to the school gym with a basketball in hand, determined to at least make a few free throws before drop kicking the ball across the gym. She was in a pissed off mood to the extreme, and she figured working up a sweat might cause her some fatigue, which would cause pain, which, in turn, would take her mind off of the emotional pain charging through her like an electric current.

She kicked the door to the gym open rather then pushed it, a labor within itself, considering how thick the wooden doors were. Stomping in, the look on her face was far from pleasant, her eyes were narrowed and her shoulders were hunched. The ball was under her arm and was being held between her wrist and her hip, the only thing about her that looked stress free. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail for the sake of practicality, and she wore a tank top and jeans. She stared as a girl kicked a soccer ball at the basketball hoop across the court, sighed, and proceeded to use the other hoop. She wasn’t going to start a conversation, not while she was this angry. She’d likely end up freaking the kid out and making her run away in a terror.

[Germaine Sharpe]

On the contrary, Gerri's athleticism was no accident. Her power may have been a physical one, but her dedication to her physical fitness was nothing short of her own love for the game of soccer and other sports. It was because of this that she spent her free time playing the game (and sometimes others) instead of doing other typical teenage activities like shopping, hanging out on the internet, or playing video games. Not that the girl thought anything wrong with shopping (she liked looking around the mall and dressing up as much as the next girly-girl), but she never saw the purpose of sitting around and talking to friends online, or playing soccer on an X-box when she could just do it for real.

And while her physical activity was for recreational purposes oppose to training or therapy, she still found it annoying when a seemingly aggressive person stormed into the gymnasium with game plans of her own. Not that Gerri had any right to protest this stranger's use of the public facility, particularly since the other girl was using it for its intended purpose of basketball, but the younger teen still found a reason to be annoyed. Mainly in the stranger's unwelcoming disposition and her failure to say hello.

Germaine was going to let it be for the time being. After all, she had her own problems to deal with (if one could even consider trying to kick a soccer ball into a basketball hoop a problem). It wasn't long, however, before one of her kicks actually landed dead center on the backboard and ricochet off it with enough force to send it through the hoop on the other side of the court. Ha! Success! As unintentional as that might have been, the brunette was definitely going to count that. And she was too busy hopping up and down and cheering to care that she may have interrupted what ever this other girl was doing. Speaking of which, Gerri now had someone to gloat to. "Didja see that?! Wasn't it totally awesome?! Yeah! Woohoo!" She jumped and first pumped a couple more times for good measure.

[L.C. Milliner]

L.C. dribbled the ball and shot like she was supposed to, shooting for about ten minutes. Every time the ball bounced off the backboard, she cursed under her breath, but in exchange she felt a small bit of pride when she made five consecutive throws and baskets. Well, not small, but that was beside the point. Whatever. She missed the sixth, which brought her back down, but managed to get up to eight. Nine free throws would be her new record, if she remembered right.

She threw the ball up just as she heard the cracking sound of a ball hitting the other backboard. She flinched and looked up to her own basket, noting the ball teetering on the rim, but just as it was about to go in, out of nowhere sailed the soccer ball, and by some inexplicable defiance of the laws of physics, it went through her basket. This wouldn’t have bothered her, except that her own ball was knocked off the rim and out of the way. (Okay, it still would’ve bothered her, but she had a good reason now.) She blinked at the basket in disbelief, her brain seeming to overload and blue screen of death at the idea of a girl across the gym kicking a soccer ball into a different hoop then the one she was aiming at. L.C. raised one hand and pointed at the ball, now on the floor, mouth half open.

She snapped out of it, of course, when the girl’s cheers and whooping echoed across the gymnasium. The hand snapped down and L.C. glared over her shoulder at the girl for an instant, then turned and walked forward, picking up the ball. L.C. was calm as she turned, holding the ball, and she watched the girl for a moment. “That was good.” She conceded. “Now watch what I can do.” She took the ball and threw it into the air before drop kicking it straight up, so high that it hit the gym ceiling. As it came back down, however, L.C. watched as she balled her hand into a fist, waiting until it was halfway down before her knuckles broke out into two inch spikes. As it descended, she pulled back and, with all her strength, uppercut to punch the ball.

CRA-POCK!

It exploded on contact and Jesus H. Christ, it hurt. (What does the ‘H’ stand for anyway? Did anyone know?) The air released from the ball made it shoot up another ten feet into the air before it fell back to the floor, limp and useless with a huge hole in the side, the evidence of the twenty little spikes that had punctured the skin. She looked back to the girl with a blank look, a mask of sheer unreadable expression covering her face. She didn’t look angry, or smug, or upset. She looked very neutral about the whole ordeal.

“You wrecked. My shot.” Those four words were the only ones that fell from her lips as her hand fell back to her side, the gleaming iron spikes diving back into her skin. Her knuckles were a bright red color and looked ready to start swelling any second. L.C. made no move to acknowledge the pain, merely stared at the girl in stunned silence.

[Germaine Sharpe]

The glare went unnoticed as Gerri continued to celebrate her accidental score, because that was totally the coolest thing she had accomplished with a soccer ball in her entire soccer career. She simply grinned as the other girl picked up her ball and congratulated her. Well, it wasn't exactly congratulation, but Gerri was going to take whatever she could and pretend it was. She stopped bouncing long enough to watch the demonstration the older teen had for her, frowning when L.C. kicked the ball.

"Hey! If you kick it like that, you're gonna end up breaking it," she shouted, pouting as the ball smacked into the ceiling. And since her eyes were following the ball when it came back down, she never noticed the spikes that awaited it at the bottom of its fall. As such, when the ball collided with the other girl's fist and exploded, Gerri gasped in surprise rather than horror.

"Oh no! See, I told you so. You were too rough," she chided her older peer while placing her hands on her hips. "And now neither of us can play with it." She wasn’t mad with the stranger. After all, it wasn’t her fault if she was a basketball player and didn’t understand that soccer balls were different. Germaine was quick to assume it was ignorance that led to the death of her ball, rather than foul intentions.

It wasn't until she ran up to retrieve the deflated lump did she realize something else was up. "Hee-eey. There's a giant hole in it," she mused, picking up the shredded ball and turning it over in her hands. "You must have one good arm!" she said with a big grin, still oblivious as ever. When she looked over to L.C, however, she finally noticed the older teen's spiked fist and registered the displeasure in her voice. Of course, Germaine still failed to realize that someone was actually angry with her, but obviously the other girl was angry about something.

"But you were the one who broke the ball, silly." That was the best reason Gerri could see for L.C's behavior. Oh yeah, that basketball thing? Totally forgotten by this point, and now that this stranger was actually talking to her, Gerri wasn't going to let her go. "Those spikes are cool, though. Is that your power? I have a cool power too! I can shoot acid from my fingers!" She held up one hand in the shape of a gun. "Well, it's kinda more like...spray...or drizzle most of the time, but still! It's acid, so that's cool right? Right?" she rambled on. Then she remembered she was holding onto the remains of her soccer ball. "Oh! Yeah, but now my ball's broken so I dunno what I'm going to do. Because, ya know, I was playing soccer, but now I can't." She bit her lip in thought, finally reaching a pause in her fast-paced blurb.

[Event !]

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