Getting to Know One Another

With all four of her guests gathered, Blaze made a point to introduce each of the girls one-by-one to the others and asked each of them to let the others know why they were there. That wasn’t quite as productive as she had hoped initially since all four other woman had different versions of the same answer; they were there because Blaze had invited them. Blaze had to push them to explain a little further as to why they accepted the invitation and that helped somewhat.

Night Knight respected Blaze’s experience and knew she had fought against a myriad of different villains of all shapes and sizes over the past couple decades. She was hoping that learning some of her philosophies and hearing her stories could provide some insight that could assist her own activities in the future. Hard Time didn’t say much and she largely just provided a scattered, blushing explanation that seemed to keep coming back to how amazing she thought Blaze was. High Tech said she was always pleased to help out her fellow heroes and heroines. A chance to find out what, if anything, they needed to make their lives easier and their bad-guy-capturing ability more successful was always a worthwhile investment. Foxtrot said that in addition to respect for Blaze, any excuse to leave the city for a relatively calm, quiet, and peaceful environment was always welcome.

With a little bit more help and direction from Blaze, the conversation remained pleasant as she asked the girls to give a little bit more information about herself. Hard Times was the quickest to open up which was a surprise to nobody. She came from relatively humble roots as her father was a truck driver and mother a school teacher. As far as she knew there were no supers anywhere in her family line so everyone she knew was shocked when puberty came and soon after that she found herself stronger than either of her parents. That of course was just the tip of the iceberg and her physical strength just continued to grow. For a little while it almost became dangerous as Hard Time, a couple of times, found herself using too much strength and nearly hurting someone. At that point she and her parents had turned to help from some councilors and veteran superheroes that had to deal with awakening powers when they were young as well. With their assistance she did her best to keep everything low-key and under control until she turned 18 and decided to try out the superhero gig for real. Carrying a big hammer and wearing the hard hat on her head were meant to be reminders of the humble, hard working roots that she came from.

Night Knight was likewise from a fairly humble home when she was young. Her parents were divorced before she was born though and she spent her entire childhood going back-and-forth between their parents’ houses and it was her stepmother that accidentally exposed her to witchcraft through, of all things, an Ouija Board. The board game ripoff of course didn’t do anything but she had heard about magic having influences and really existing throughout the world, and the next day on the way home from school, she stopped by the local public library to get some books on the subject. Early on her biggest challenge was telling the difference between real arcane books and con jobs masquerading as witchcraft in pursuit of a quick buck which were surprisingly plentiful. There was something in the language and terminology that she was able to identify eventually and once she learned to tell the difference between the frauds and genuine articles, she was soon learning the secrets to controlling many of the unseen powers around her.

High Tech was born with an enhanced mental capacity and most of her life it was apparent to those around her. Not only was she potty trained and crawling before being three months old, but she actually had memories of the process. She was learning to walk at the same time she was beginning to read chapter books. While most kids her age were beginning to count, High Tech was beginning to program basic computer games. The one thing she did that was typical to young children was enjoy cartoons. That combined with her parent’s both being good and upstanding people instilled in her a desire to make the world a better place. Once she began to realize how freakishly hyper-intelligent she was, the woman saw that as the world giving her the opportunity to do just that and now she did her best to take advantage of it.

That brought everyone to Foxtrot and everyone at the table knew the basics of her story and there was a moment of awkward silence as Blaze said she didn’t need to explain hers if she didn’t want to. It was High Tech that was the one that tried to move the conversation with her into a more positive direction. “May I ask something? You’re always smiling and always happy. Every time I have seen you, you seem to like being around people. But you have kind of a loner rep and sometimes it seems like you hate being around others. I’ve always found that curious and was wondering what’s up with that.”

Foxtrot took a deep breath and a sip of her lemonade, taking on a serious expression as she answered. She had never really opened up about much on the topic but as she looked up at the hopeful and interested face of one of her personal heroes, Blaze, she decided if she was ever going to do it, now would be the time. “Obligation. Sometimes, well, a lot of times really, I feel like I have a responsibility to those that Professor DooLots, destroyed, before he got to me. I kind of feel like the end product of all of their sacrifices and suffering that came before me. None of them will ever get to smile or laugh or have fun so I kind of feel like I need to do that for all of them. So I try my best to live life to the fullest in their memory.”

She took another sip of her drink and used a napkin to swipe away a tear that had snuck out of her eye before continuing, “The isolation though isn’t so much a choice as it is a necessity. You know how over time a person learns to tune out background inputs? Sounds, smells, sights, and stuff like that a person deals with all the time? The human brain, my brain, wasn’t designed to tune out senses as intense and powerful as the ones I have. Which means all too often, I am bombarded by sensory input that honestly, I don’t want. I mean, unless one of you starts downing the punch at a ridiculous speed, I could probably guess what order you four will need to use the bathroom just because of the smells you are producing. Sometimes it gets to be too much and I need to retreat to my apartment. It’s a 3B. Deepest underground I could afford just to get away from the city's smells and sounds as much as I can.”

Everyone sat in silence as they listened. It all made sense and as she wrapped up, Blaze watched as High Tech stood up and walked into a distant corner of the facility while typing on her phone like crazy. It was obvious that she had something going on in her mind so Blaze didn’t say anything and decided to see what she was up to. Night Knight on the other hand felt a desire to dig a little deeper into Foxtrot’s emotional state. As many spells could be fueled, altered, and manipulated by the way a person felt, that was always a topic of interest for the woman. But unfortunately her bluntness and social clumsiness resulted in her responding in a manner that seemed like it could derail some of the positive interactions they’ve had.

“I don’t think you are carrying on their memory correctly.” Saying that, and more importantly saying it that way made Blaze and Hard Time both look on with concern at the other two girls as High Tech didn’t hear since she was still preoccupied off in the corner doing whatever she was doing. While socially clumsy, Night Knight was attuned to emotions so she quickly realized that she had put her foot into her mouth again. Blaze was a bit apprehensive, Hard Times was angry and a bit offended by what she had said, and Foxtrot was going through a small, swirling tie dye of emotions.

“Sorry, I have become quite adept at detecting when I’ve said something that upsets someone, but I still remain a bit unable to do a good job of preventing myself from being insensitive in the first place. If it helps, I understand your desire to isolate as sensing strong emotions is something I have become adept at. Battles full of hate, anger, fear, relief, and so much else can be intense. Such a huge tapestry with so many people feeling so many things can be overwhelming at times. So from the perspective of often needing to decompress after extended periods of intense stimuli, I somewhat understand.

But what I meant about their memory, it’s just more about the full gamut of emotions. You say you want to be happy, and smile, and laugh, and have a good time because those that came before you in that evil laboratory will never get the chance. That is an absolutely beautiful way to look at life and I applaud it to the core of my soul, but I feel that you are neglecting the full human experience when you focus too much on the joyful aspects of life. What I don’t want you to forget is that those who you seek to live in memory of, were also robbed of their opportunities to get mad. Or to experience heartbreak. They will never get the chance to be embarrassed, disgusted, sexually aroused, jealous, or hungry. Those emotions have power as well and are a part of life. They are all a part of the human experience. I just think that if you truly want to carry their spirits on, you shouldn’t limit yourself to one corner of the emotional spectrum.”

Foxtrot listened and thought about what Night Knight had said, and couldn’t deny a lot of it made sense. She had been so insistent on being happy for happiness sake that she hadn’t really considered anything like what the other woman said. And being happy all the time, putting on that smile all the time,sometimes could be fucking exhausting. So she decided to give Night’s advice a shot and out of nowhere just started screaming. At first no words, just a loud, visceral shout. Night seemed to see it coming and covered her ears while the other two at the table were completely caught off-guard, Hard Times nearly falling out of her chair from surprise.

As she yelled, Foxtrot began thinking back through many of things that upset her over the years, things that made her resulted in her repressing another bout of anger. Soon the woman stood up and everyone watched as the incoherent screaming morphed into a long series of loud curse words as she swore over and over again. As she let her years of unexpressed anger out, Hard Time noticed her fists were balled up and could read her body language very well and knew what it meant. She knew what Foxtrot needed to do so she stood up and walked in front of her, smacking herself in the shoulder three times, and telling Foxtrot to let her have it.

Foxtrot’s rage subsided for a moment as she asked Hard Time if she was sure. “We aren’t likely to find anything that can take one of your punches more effectively than me. I'm the most durable thing around so just go for it.”

Hard Times kept her hands up and brought her arms into her body as tight as she could to help absorb the impact as Foxtrot began hitting her while continuing to scream out over a decade’s worth of pent-up hostility. The noise that Hard Times made after the first punch found it’s way into her midsection made it clear that she had drastically underestimated the amount of **** that Foxtrot’s punches would have. Each punch cased her to grunt a little bit but she did nothing to indicate that she wanted Foxtrot to stop. In fact as the smaller girl began to slow down, Hard Time began to lightly taunt the girl in an attempt to motivate her to keep going.

It worked and for a little bit Foxtrot’s punches picked up their intensity a little bit before she finally stopped and stood panting and catching for a little bit. As she did that, Night new what was coming. The woman had just broken down one emotional barrier that she had built up over more than a decade and she expected another one was about to collapse. She lightly poked Blaze’s arm with the knuckle of her index finger and pointed at Foxtrot. Blaze wasn’t sure what she was getting at but it didn’t take long to figure out as the other girl caught her breath and quickly after that, the rage she had just been showing was replaced with the sounds of sobbing. This must be what Night was hinting at. Blaze got up and ran over to put an arm around Foxtrot and pulled her in for a hug as she let another part of her trauma out.

The truth is that after everything she went through, she still hadn’t gotten a chance to express her anger or cry very much since she left Professor DooLots’ lab. While there she was often in pain or ****. Once she was rescued, she was constantly examined, tested, and questioned about what happened and what she remembered by a vast assortment of medical professionals and scientists. For a large part of this she was often ****, though this time she was often awake and the doctor’s seemed to be more worried about keeping her stable and out of pain until they understood the extent of the changes to her physiology and how stable her new body was. Once they figured out that she was strong and healthy, they began to back off the medication and focus more on trauma counseling and around that time is when Foxtrot began to feel the need to be happy for the sake of everyone else that died and suffered. So until this moment she hadn’t had the chance to “just let it out,” and let her emotions flow.

As Blaze held the smaller woman she looked over at Hard Time who was wincing as she rubbed her midsection and asked her if she was alright. “You know, when I told my dad that Foxtrot was going to be here, he whistled and told me that I should listen to her, as well as you. Said that he was surprised that there would be two women here that could beat me in a straight-up fistfight. I’ll be fine, but the girl’s punches actually hurt and experiencing her rage first hand, I think my dad might have been right.”

With a wave, Night called Hard Time over to her side and materialized an ice pack and offered it to her which she smiled and took. After that everyone waited until the crying subsided slowly and another emotion began to take its place, though this one wasn’t nearly as strong. Collapsing and breaking down like this in front of a personal hero like Blaze and three other strong heroes caused her sobbing to break up with embarrassment in it’s place. As she finished off her cry session and being held by Blaze, they were approached by High Tech as one of her robots landed next to her and handed her two packages. One was a box of tissues that she placed in front of Foxtrot who grabbed it and did her best to clean herself up. “Thanks.” She stood up and took a step away from Blaze as she looked at all four of the other women. “Thank you all actually.”

With a knowing smirk, Night Knight looked at her and spoke. “So, feeling better?”

All Foxtrot could do is smile and for once, it felt like something she was doing entirely for herself. “Somehow I feel better than I ever have, and at the same time, in other ways, I feel worse than I have in years.”

Night just laughed at that answer as she took a sip of her water, “Yeah, being human’s fucking weird like that sometimes.”

After she cleaned herself up, High Tech presented the other package that her robot had given her and she handed it to Foxtrot as well. This time it looked like a small jewelry box and when she opened it, she saw three small plastic clips about a half inch long. Foxtrot looked at it confused and High Tech just smiled. “Clip one onto your nose and each of your ears, you’ll figure it out.”

Foxtrot did as suggested and when she finished, for a brief moment, it was as if the world disappeared. At least for parts of her brain as all of a sudden many of the background noises and smells that she usually struggled through vanished. High Tech smiled at the shocked look on the girl’s face, “I had to look up the precise number of smell receptors in the elephant’s trunk to get the specs right but if my calculations are accurate, and everything was put together perfectly, you should now have a sense of hearing and smell that is just just slightly better than that of the normal human so long as you keep them in place. And as a bonus,” High Tech held up her cell phone to Foxtrot’s face with the camera on so she could see herself,” I added a mild cloaking technology so it will be virtually invisible to the human eye. Well, not really a full cloak, I didn’t have time for that. I just used a type of plastic that will become transparent when exposed to body heat. So how do they feel?”

Foxtrot took a couple of moments, putting them in and pulling them back out a couple of times, unable to believe the tremendous difference that such a seemingly tiny, insignificant piece of plastic had on her. “Are there any side effects?”

High Tech just snorted, “If there were, I would have told you before you put it on. The only thing you may need to worry about is that if you wear it for too long, taking it out might cause disorientation as it will take your brain some time to readjust to the heightened levels of sensory input. Other than that, it should be perfectly safe. I had been working on aids for those with reduced senses already so your dilemma got me wondering if there was a way to reduce rather than magnify the sounds and smells one experiences. So a lot of the research for that was completed already, I just needed to figure out a good way to reverse the process.”

Foxtrot was about to ask what she could offer as a thank you but it was a look that High Tech had seen several times before. “Think nothing of it, in fact I should be paying you for helping me come up with the idea. If I can bring the cost of these down a little, I can make money selling them as noise cancelling devices for those with jobs subject to hearing loss, or smell inhibitors for those that involve spending time around particularly unpleasant odors. In fact if you want, I have no problem giving you a cut since you inspired the idea. How does sixty percent of profits sound? It’ll probably only be a million or two per year but it’s better than nothing right?”

Foxtrot rubbed her head in shock as High Tech spoke and not quite believing what she was hearing. It almost sounded like she had just accidented her way into becoming a millionaire after knowing High Tech for five minutes. “How do you make money when you give it away that quickly?”

The inventor just laughed, “You’d be amazed at how much money I save when I’m able to do almost all the R&D myself. And when I cut in idea providers like I just did to you, it tends to attract others with good ideas that they can’t figure out how to accomplish. Of course it also attracts a whole lot of idiots and ideas I want no part of but hey,” she held up her joint and smiled, “dealing with shit like that is why I smoke shit like this.” She took a puff and smiled at everyone as she dismissed her robot back to the helicopter outside and sat back down at the table. “It also takes the edge off. Seems like all of us get overwhelmed by something or other. Foxtrot’s got psychotically overactive senses, N. Knight is attuned to the emotional realm and has to deal with that way too much, Hard Time lets her strength get away from her sometimes, and my brain sometimes goes a little into hyperdrive and it becomes hard to focus. So I take a little something to relax, chill out, and slow it down so I can focus on tasks at hand more effectively.” High Tech grabbed a couple slices of swiss cheese from the platter on the end of the table and looked at their hostess. “So we all got our issues. If I may be so bold, you do seem to want us to come together, it might help to learn of something that vexes even the great Blaze. Or are you truly as perfect and amazing as you seem from the news clips we see of you?”

Blaze took a moment to look at Foxtrot to make sure she wasn’t crying anymore before taking a closer look at Hard Time as she held the ice back to her abdomen, and then sat down between High Tech and Hard Times as she pulled a bottle from the belt on her waste and opened it up. “You know, as you probably guessed with everything I can do, my body tends to be more efficient than the normal person’s but it’s not exactly limitless.” She pulled a plate to her and carefully let a single drop of her drink fall onto it. “Here, have a taste of that.” When both of the women on either side of her began to reach down, Blaze put a hand in front of both of them. And she spoke with a level of intensity that made them both hesitant. “But not too much.”

High Tech now began looking at the plate with hesitancy and Hard Time with confusion. “But it’s only a drop.” And with a nod the woman told both of them next to her that they definitely didn’t want to taste a full drop. It wasn’t dangerous, she wouldn’t offer it to them if it was, but when they tried it they would understand. They both remained uncertain and it was Foxtrot that became the first one to become brave enough to reach across the table, dip her finger into the speck of liquid and put it into her mouth.

Hard Time earlier in the night was at least a little amused at hearing the loud and visceral swearing coming from such a cute, innocent looking, small woman. She was glad she waited to comment on it because apparently it was able to get even worse as Foxtrot grabbed several bottles of water and ran to the bathroom. She didn’t even want to drink the water, she just put some in her mouth, swirled it around, and spit it out. She did that over and over again and when she returned to the table, she was still outright rubbing her tongue as if trying to get off whatever had been on it. When she finally spoke, she looked at Blaze in amazement. “How can anything sweet be that fucking horrific? After that I don’t think I want to eat candy again for a year at least. What the fuck is that?!”

Blaze held the drink in her hand and took one big sip of it, from the look on Foxtrot’s face it appeared that action was going to make her throw up for a second. “Even with an enhanced digestive system, super speed burns through a lot of calories. This is a super-concentrated, ultra-sweet formula invented by myself with assistance from a few scientists and nutrition experts. Basically several truckloads worth of fruit, the sugar removed from all of them, and then that sugar put together and super-concentrated until we have the most calorie-dense substance on Earth right here in my hands. Luckily I don’t need to use it too much, only when I need to maintain my speed for an extended period of time but still, as Foxtrot can attest the stuff is sickeningly sweet. Literally."

After seeing the way Foxtrot reacted to Blaze's concoction, all the other women totally lost interest in giving it a try for themselves and Blaze moved the meeting along. "I know it isn't quite a deep emotional trauma or anything like that, but this stuff being the battery that keeps me going when I get ****, wondering how long before it'll be before a gruelling fight forces me to down more of it, is one of my most continual, ongoing concerns."

She put the top back on the bottle. "But anyway, on to why I called you all here today. It's more than just getting to know and trust," Blaze started but was interrupted as she paused.

"You were hoping to establish a kind of team or something right?" While she wasn't surprised that one of her guests figured that out, she was a little surprised that it was Hard Time that guessed it. Seeing the confirmation from Blaze's expression, Hard Time celebrated for a moment. "I noticed when I saw everyone here that this crew was like an old school basketball team. A brainy point guard that gets everyone into position and runs the plays," she pointed at High Times, "the ranged sharp shooter that stays behind the line and fires the deadly long distance shots," this time she indicated Night Knight.

She pointed at herself, "the big, dumb, clumsy center that stands in the middle and uses their power to act as an enforcer and tries to lock the floor down," she looked to Foxtrot, "the power forward who is almost as strong but is a bit smaller, faster, and more skilled. And finally we have the all-star small forward that does a bit of everything." With that she wrapped up with Blaze.

As Hard Times finished, Night Knight realized something else. "And sometimes one of us needs to deal with an enemy that uses crazy weapons, other times they might use magic so having someone that understands both the technological and magical things nearby can be useful. Sometimes tight spaces could require a slender body which would make Foxtrot invaluable. You have put a lot of thought into who you invited didn't you?"

Blaze sighed as she reached across the table and grabbed the board game that she had grabbed and began to open and set it up. "You have no idea. I have been mulling it over for over seven years. Figuring out the right pieces and waiting for the right collection of talent to become available. Not just the right powers and skills, but the right personalities and characters as well.

Watching how different you four are, but seeing how well you have begun to look out for the others and get along makes me think my patience may have been worth it. But you don't need to decide yet. Let's sit down, play this game, and see how you feel after spending a few hours together at least. I hope that isn't asking too much."

For all four, just sitting down and playing a game for a couple hours was less than a chore, in fact with the legendary Blaze involved, it was an honor. High Times reached into the box and grabbed the little yellow character token, "So what are the rules?"