For all the books for all the subjects, Lori was finding herself disappointed in the New York Metropolitan Library.

For one, her library card would not scan. The strip on the back had lost its... strippy-ness. Also, the computers were uselessly rainbow screened when she walked by. She couldn't check out a book or look through the digital catalog if she wanted to.

Another thing she noticed was the severe lack of parahuman study materials. The section about Buddhist monks and their techniques to put mind over matter had better information on controlling her mutation.

Opposite that issue, there was simply too much information about electricity. Maxwell's Law, the properties of subatomic particles, and voltage versus amperage did not even scratch the surface. Lori could waste her life away in here, would have to waste her life away in here if she wanted to learn all of this stuff.

This day had started out strong and full of hope. Now Lori was much deflated, brain-fired and buried between stack of books taller than she was.

"Uuugh." Said the cave-woman who let her forehead flop into the middle of an open book. It was nice in there. There was nothing quite like the smell of library.

== I hope the Gming is ok? ==

Granny studied at NYU. And had been for some time. This just in case you did not know. What she studied? Well, you might call it by its simple name. Blowing things up. Other people called it a MSc (the University), exciting (her Professor in Nitrogen Chemistry), extremely harzardous (the worker safety inspection team) or ARE YOU NUTS?. That being said by some Computational Chemistry guy who was drawn to her lab room by loud and intermittent noises. He left in a hurry. She did not quite understand why.

Sure. There was sharpnel bouncing off her glowing green shields. There were the loud noises of things breaking. Azidoazide Azides were not things you did for their beautiful numerical values. (This being the main reason computational chemistry existed.) Or their colors. Or because they were nice and fluffy.
You did them, because they blew up. Repeatedly. Violently. And, goodness, they were fun (!) in that extremely violent way.

But alas, studying came with its on chores. You had to, just as an example, contend with the tedium of looking things up in a library. That was if you did not want to blow your non-Mutant backside to bits. In her case she looked things up in the library because she did not want to blow her non-Mutant students into little specks of dust. And (maybe) because the Worker Safety Team had almost had an apoplexy when she explained why she did not use blast shields. (That Doctor came in the most engaging shades of white and purple. They even alternated!)

So, to spare other ppeople the nerves, she now sat at a Computer of all things, reading a nice article on Things-that-go-boom. Except that what went boom -- her brain was the intended target -- the ciomputer screen suddenly turned to going boom. Or rather rainbow colors. She was startled and raised her head. To her left another Student was cursing. Apparently he had not saved the draft for his latest Essay. To her right another head suddenly came up.

A most engaging phenomenon, comouters turning off in a ripple movement. Almost as if there was a field source somewhere nearby. The old lady (people rarely stared at her any more) grabbed her hat with the big sunflower and proceeded to stand up. As she did so, her walking stick came floating by. She proceeded, with an almost brisk pace, to trace the source of the disruption of her scientific reverie.

She had quite an idea about what it might be.

A blody woman (nice breasts by the by) proceeded to sit down, plop another book onto a growing pile on her desk and fell head on onto an old paperback. >> Uuuugh << Well, she thought by herself, there we have it. Her creaking bones carried her closer.

>> Hello Dear.

Her voice was a nice whispered Alto. Wispering here like the wind, because the librarian might try to get her head otherwise.

Juka didn't normally like libraries very much. Or rather, it wasn't that he actively disliked them but more to the point of fact he just didn't find them very interesting. Books were just words on paper and those were not nearly so entertaining as all the myriad of fun things he could actually be doing in the world. Why read about something in dry dreary pages when one could be out experiencing the world for oneself? He was a performer not an academic.

As a presently 14 year old teenager, however, Juka soon discovered that he was required to do reports for high school. This should not have been much of a shock to him as he had gone through high school once before but, alas, he had put many of those unpleasantly tedious memories squarely out of his head. They would have staid that way too except that circumstances required him to be a teenager again and go back to school. Circumstances. What normal person could ever say that?

Head down and mentally grimacing to himself, Juka idly scanned the shelves, in theory looking for things on US history. The theory wasn't exactly panning out as the concentration needed to find the books that were required was utterly lacking. How did regular teenagers do it? Or people who were not teenagers for that matter? It was just so boring!

In aimlessly wandering and trying desperately to will his impending report away, he almost walked past the distantly familiar woman with the blond hair. If he recalled correctly, her name was Lori and it had been a very very long time since he had seen or or anyone else familiar in the city, for that matter. He froze like a deer in headlights, unsure whether to turn around and flee madly or actually approach the woman.

She was dazedly admiring nothing at all when someone whispered to her.

"Holy-!" Lori jumped straight up like a cat. Up and out of her chair, she was already biting back the rest of what had almost slipped right out out of her mouth as soon as she had seen the owner of that voice. Papa taught her to respect her elders. What she could not bite back, however, was the electric jolt that shot out in every direction around her for two feet.

Well, it was better than it had been last week.

"I'm so... ma'am you scared me, I didn't mean..." Lori stopped and clenched her fists and her side while she concentrated to stop the constant waste of power. She packed it in, stuffed the electricity and her sledgehammer heart beat down until she could think straight.

"I'm sorta new at this." And sorta miserable at this. At least her book selection made it clear that she was trying to get better.

"Are you hurt or...?" She swallowed hard enough to make a cartoon gulp sound. If she'd accidentally murdered an old lady... well, it was one thing to do it on purpose, but quite another thing to have it be an accident.

((OOC: Let me know if you need edits. Sorry, Juka. I wasn't sure how to engage you just yet, but do feel free to get shocked ))

She thought she had been nice. She whispered like the wind, light as a butterfly.
A thunderstorm knocked her on her old, old butt in response.

At least that possibly happened, for she found herself sitting on the carpet and, going by the smell or burned things and ozone around, something about her was singed. That was, something beside the plastic carpet, shich showed nice melted fractal lines radiating outward from a pair of shoes. Some things were fuzzy in her mind. Like the reason she was sitting on her butt and mussing up her nice dress.

She blinked like an owl for a few times. Big, slow blinks that managed to convey a sense of incredulity. Why am I here again? Oh right. Blowing things up. Mhhh... the carpet had suffered from heavy electric discharge... not good around explosives. They tended to ba nasty that way.

<<"Are you hurt or...?"

She looked up. Someone had been speaking to her? Ah. The blonde. A smile, small, appeared on her face.

>> Oh no, it was nothing. But do be a dear and get me a chair...

She let her voice trail off. Then her eyes fell on the ground and her recuperating mind connected the burnt carpet with the shoes and those with the woman. Mutant. Young. Out of control. How novel!

((OOC: going on without Juka since her player's AWOL))

Chair. Lori blanked for what seemed like eternity. Chair! Right! She turned and grabbed one and practically hurled it at the old lady in her haste to get the solid oak beneath the granny's patootie. Calm. She needed to calm down.

Lori swallowed and let go of the hair and then slowly and veeeeery deliberately offered her arm for the elderly woman to use in helping her ease herself in.

"That was a nasty shock, Gramma. Don't mind me saying, but there's a lot of women better than 50 that have heart issues. You're sure you're alright?" And she so did not want a homicide on her hands.

The blonde went back to her books, closing the one she'd been snoozing on and sorting them around until she could decide which ones to take home with her.