Grace comes spilling out of the portal as if pushed, making a strangled squealing sound. She bumped into Hypatia, and fanned her wings awkwardly to regain her balance. "S-sorry Hypatia," she apologized sincerely.

Her face is immediately red, and she quickly steps aside, lest someone run into /her/ on the way through the portal, unsure who was coming through next.

She self-consciously brushes herself off, her hands white and shaking, but her expression looking contrastingly exhilarated. She turns her head on a swivel, her mouth hanging open, her face an open book and as easy to read-- awe, wonder, excitement at the location and the people in it.

Grace watches Nick and Levi come through, and seems to sense Nick's disorientation. She reached out and touched his arm briefly, and without asking permission first this time, her fingertips strangely cool. The dizziness would leave him immediately, and almost as quickly, so would her hand.

She smiled wide, a grin that might split her face. "Ron-- that's just a /fantastic/ thing, that is!"

Nick is caught by surprise by Grace's touch and healing, but is grateful, "Thanks, I needed that." He and Levi step out of the way of the portal, not wanting to block the path.

Almost forgotten FrostBurn stepped out the portal, lost for words.

Jeremy landed on this side of the portal, moments before Ron went to shut it.

"Is it possible to get lost in one of those things?" Jeremy asked as he adjusted his bag on his shoulder. He looked rattled, but it seemed mostly psychological. The average faced 6'3" skater-barista shook off his nerves and now stood slightly taller with a confidence he hadn't yet shown. He brushed the hair out of his face, trying to tuck it behind his ears where it would. As he followed the group, he popped off his wristbands and put them in the front pocket of his bag. Unknown to him, his aura had become focused, reflecting his attitude about his training. It appeared to flow into the ground and into the air more than just emanate around him. Outwardly, all he did was smile at how many had come to the Maul this time. "Hey Ron or Pat, either of you know if it is possible to set up rapid transport portals between here and Whitehold so Ron doesn't have to be the bus driver all the time?"

"Hurry up Mouse, we're getting left behind". Mouse and FrostBurn slowly catch up as everyone start to walk towards the Maul. "Can I have some jerky please, i've never tasted it before?" says FrostBurn as he mildly blushes.

"Mrawr!" Mouse growls, and leaps up to FrostBurn's shoulder, if he lets her settle there for the moment, she'd wrap her tail around his arm. "On, noble steed!!" The food seems to have restored her batteries to full, or overly-full. She's excited and full of fire and sass.

Jeremy looked over at the two and shrugged, "I dunno what you guys need, but I'd like to reserve some time in a danger room for an hour or so. Last time I was here I didn't have much time to really get a grasp on what I could do. Ended up in the clinic and that took me to the costume shop for the wristbands I have in my bag. It was my 'easy way' out last time, and I'm not looking for easy anymore."

Jeremy's pace and stride almost had him now leading the group before he stopped next to Pat, "Did I hear right, Goldenrod?"

In rare form, Jeremy was genuinely comfortable around Lady Nova. He could look past the initial apprehension to be a hero, and just saw her as a person like him. It was comfortable enough he felt safe to crack a joke, "C-3PO? I was thinking Shirley Bassey myself, but I guess that implies a Midas touch."

(Apologies for the delay. My phone's browser was on strike.)
Goldenrod answered questions in turn, but the order here may be off ^_^
"Danger room for me, as well. Considering the predominant color of this staff, Goldenrod seems right.
Bring on the jokes. I roomed for four years at University of Chicago with a gaming nerd and a USAFROTC cadet. It was non-stop F&SF. Action films like Goldfinger were close behind.
A permanent Gate? It would take a lot of time..."

While the rest of the group was distracted by Mouse's antics or the sign-in process, Sam snuck over to the rules sign on the wall next to the door leading back to the Danger Room. He smiled mischievously and began throwing very small, very thin strands to create lettering on the sign. Underneath DO NOT BARGE INTO THE DANGER ROOM, he wrote in equally large letters THAT MEANS YOU, LADY NOVA!!!

His mischief managed, he snuck back around to stand behind the rest of the group again.

"Blame Jeremy, he mentioned Dame Shirley." Noticing the sign, Goldenrod asks, "Lady Nova, is there a reason they've mentioned you on that sign, or is someone getting creative?"

Mouse scampered through the door, and crouched at the line in front of a target. Hypatia among others, would likely be able to see or feel her shields tightening around her, her aura calming down and slipping under the shields as well. She almost vibrates with potential and active energy... just a little ball of readiness.

Blinking as she eyes the sign, blushing in embarrassment, she hesitates before speaking as they proceed to the Danger Room...

"Let's say once upon a time an in progress training session had a -minor- interruption from your's truly." Shifts her heeled feet awkwardly as the memory resurfaces, before pouting to Sam, as her bottom lip quivers...

"W-why?"

Smiles at her from up near the ceiling. "Oh no! I ain't falling for that. If I come done there, yer gonna clock me."

"C'mon," Nick enters, motioning for Grace to follow.

As he takes a seat on the bench, Nick asks Grace, "You've had quite the first day or so here. You're not overwhelmed?"

Grace seemed... /hesitant/ to enter, but had done so anyway, sidling onto the bench next to Nick.

Her hands fold together in her lap, fingers twisting about with each other as she fidgets a little, unable to stop looking at-- well-- /everything/ for a few moments.

Finally, she turns her gaze back to Nick with a sheepish smile. "I'm so so /so/ overwhelmed... but I figure if I only take, you know-- five or six minutes at a time-- I don't get so dizzy it feels like my head'll spin off." She rubs the back of her neck, as if imagining her head spinning off.

"But it's... it's nice, anyway. I'm never gonna learn if I don't watch and go and talk to people." Her smile turns shy, her wings fluffing, rustling, and smoothing again. "I never said-- thank you for being so nice to me-- you and Levi. I dunno what I would've done if you guys hadn't come around when you did."

She laughs a little, looking a bit more relaxed. "...Probably flown into somebody's window on accident or something!"

"Oh my god, what am I, a supervillain?" Sam asked, then descended from the ceiling and landed behind Lady Nova. As he landed, he looked over at Ron. "It's not defacement if it's temporary." he argued, then shot a strand across the room to hit his little sign. The energy forming the letters was reabsorbed, then the strand dissipated. Sam then turned to Sarah and hugged her, even though he was sure it was a trick.

((No worries, FrostBurn! I'm in Australia--and I had mad asthma today >____< that's the beauty of forums :) Everyone posts when they can!))

Nick laughs. "I'm sure you would've figured something out. You're smart."

((This post's a bit rushed, school for me as well, sorry!))

((yeah i just finished for the day -_-))
Frost chewed the jerky almost choking from the rush of flavour because of eating it too fast. With his mouth wide open (full of chewed up jerky) "Mmm soo nice!".

Jeremy stopped jumping in place trying to raise his heart rate. He looked at Ron while he thought about his answer. Most of his thoughts went to memories of pranks and jackassery with Theo and his skater buddies years ago. He shrugged, settling on his conclusion, "Execution. There's like this art to trolling and it takes a skill to insult without being overt...Personally I think it's funny, but...ah who am I to be considered judge?"

Callum waits awkwardly and then speaks "who else does ranged target practice?".

Jeremy caught on to something that Ron was implying, regarding Jeremy's personal relationship drama with Katrina in reflection to this. Jeremy found the words and insight relatable, and nodded to indicate this understanding. "I Hadn't thought about that. Who's brain did you eat to gain that wisdom?"

He smirked at Ron, overtly implying he was poking fun for the sake of poking fun. He moved out a few feet and began stretching. After taking a few minutes he was limber enough to push himself tonight. With a final shake-out and a few more jumps, he looked around. He was ready to start training and wanted a good place to start. A lone target dummy popped up nearby that looked both organic and inert. It was unsettling, but he suspected the Danger Room may be sentient enough to know what was needed. He dismissed the suspicion quickly, arguing there were plenty of theorized pseudo-intelligent algorithms to analyze and predict needs and other theoretical enchantments that could do the same.

Callum's arms begin to spiral with a blue aura on his left arm and a red aura on his right. "I'm still not used to this" Callum muttered akwardly.
The auras stop spiralling and instead burst into ice and fire. His left arm pure solid ice like a shade of light blue, whilst his right arm had crimson red flames searing down to his fingers. Callum was prepared for hard, long session of training.

Callum lifts up his fire trailed arm ,blasting a red ball of crimson flame that scorches the target dummy engulfing it's head in nothing but flames. He himself is shocked by the fireball, so he tries to do the same but with his left ice fused arm. His left fist tenses into a strong position and releases a a focused blast of snow/ice, freezing what was once a target dummy head blazing with crimson flames. The result is a frozen dummy head left with a system of shattered ice. "I think i'm now ready for the superhero name FrostBurn!" His face glowing brighter than his flames with joy.

((Whoot for school holding me up, sorry. Just got home.))

After Ron's encouragement, Levi immediateely stills when the targets appear, his head tilting slightly forward, the red light of his eyes intensifying. The look was quite intimidating, coming from a seven foot tall red bot like him. An audible humb commenses as his gauntlets are activated, and occaisionally a red sliver of electricity crawls across his lower arms, sometimes striking off into the air, but quickly dissipating three to four inches from his arms. Then, he moves.

In an instant, Levi leans into a running stance, and charges forward at a speed that would seem impossible for something of his size, and he barrels through two targets, sending them flying, and him sliding to a halt near the wall, and jumping near ten feet in the air and bringing two clasped hands down onto another defenseless dummy, making it crunch into piecces. Another dummy is done away with after a mighty backhand to its midriff, sending it into a wall.

Levi then untenses, returning to the more docile state, eyes becoming less intense and the gauntlets and their hum clicking off. He walks back and sits next to Nick as if nothing happened.

"You totally could've gotten the rest of those, you know. I programmed and built you, I should know. Why'd you stop?" Nick asked.

Levi looks at Nick and tilts his head to the side slightly, "I believed it would be rude to remove all available targets. There are others here who wish to practice."

Callum stops practicing and focus' on where Grace has flew off too. "anybody got any idea where Grace has gone too?". The flames riding his arms simmer and the ice melts away revealing his arm again but leaving his fist still fused with ice.

((Incoming text wall! Splitting it into smaller chunks for easier reading :) ))

Grace had hesitated outside the Danger Room, looking for an employee, and finally spotted one-- a woman, thankfully for Grace. It was just less intimidating still to talk to women.

"Excuse me?"

"Yes, miss?" said the young woman behind the counter politely.

"I'd really like to practice in the Danger Room with the others over there," she indicated with a flick of a wingtip, surprised at it's response instead of her hand, but quickly continues, "--but I'm new in the city, and I don't have any of my stuff with me. Do you have, um... some weapons... I could borrow just while I'm here?"

The young woman seems slightly amused, but readily brings the sign-in sheet in front of her. "Sure thing, kiddo-- happens all the time. We'll need to put you down on the books though if you're going to do any training though. Name?"

Blushing, Grace said, "Grace. Just Grace."

The woman had scripted down her name-- unbeknownst to Grace registering her 'super' name as "Just Grace"-- before standing and beckoning.

Grace had followed the woman to another room, waved in by what looked like a heavily armed and armored guard, and paused, amazed. The room was extremely well organized, as well as being stocked with any number of weapons of all shapes and sizes and descriptions. The woman had been saying, "We keep it carefully under watch, so I'll need to make note of the registry number for whatever you end up borrowing for the night. What exactly were you looking for?"

Grace jerked her eyes away from the racks and cases lining the room in warehouse-like fashion, and tried to pick her jaw up off the ground.

"Bows. Like, a bow and arrows."

The woman smothered an amused sound, and led Grace to a far wall, where the winged-girl's life becomes suddenly very much more enjoyable. A rack of bows and case of quivers and arrows is before her, some of makes and materials she can't even guess at. She surveys them all for a moment, running her fingers over bow hafts and arrow shafts, before finally picking a bow off the rack on instinct.

"This one."

The woman took the bow from Grace for a moment, and scripted down a registration number burned into the grip on a pad of paper she produces from her back pocket. The bow itself is a white, almost birch-like wood, a longbow, and of a classic, very simple style. Grace tried the string a few times before slinging it over her shoulder and reaching for a hip quiver. The woman again checks the registry number and says, "That's got thirty arrows, miss. Try not to lose 'em or get 'em fried up, if you can-- but if it happens, we understand, considering the magic users you've got in that Danger Rom right now."

Grace has to strongly resist the urge to hug the woman, feeling about ten feet taller with the finely sanded and polished birchwood bow over her shoulder.

The woman smiles, obviously having seen this look of relief and excitement before. "Check out with me when you're finished, kiddo. And don't forget to knock and ring the button before you try to go back in the Danger Room."

Grace bobs her head enthusiastically and thanks the employee breathlessly, trotting back to the Danger Room. She knocks loudly three times, and pushes a button by the door, signaling her desire to come back in.

Grace quickly re-entered the room in a flurry of feathers and limbs, shutting the door again as quickly as possible.

Breathless and a bit flushed, she smiles at Ron-- "Thanks!"-- then smiles wider at Nick and Levi, hurrying back over to them. She sits down with a soft thump, and the arrows in her hip quiver rattle against each other.

She takes the bow off her shoulder and shows it to Nick, saying, "Look! Isn't it pretty?" Her excitement is palpable-- /almost/ literally-- semi-infectious in the way that Wren's cheerfulness effects others.

Grace stares at Nick in bewilderment for a moment-- though as he's shortly to find out, not exactly the kind of bewilderment he might have expected.

"Well, /yeah/, of course! I used to target shoot all the time at... where I'm from. Have you got an apple?" She reconsiders for a moment, saying, "But you'd probably better let me hit some targets for a minute first, so I can get to know this bow first..."

Seemingly decided, she sprung up to her feet and moved several paces away, nocking an arrow and pulling the string idly several times to get a feel for it. As she does so, her previously lithe-looking, pale-skinned arms flex, showing off a healthy muscle tone beneath.

She takes in the other people in the room, spreading her wings slightly for balance... and focuses on a ground target, stationary. In a movement that looks long-practiced and smooth, she draws the bow, sights for no more than a moment, and a rush of singing air is followed by a hefty THUNK. The arrow had struck the target in the 'throat' area.

Grace pursed her lips for a moment, then with hardly a pause, chose a different target at random, drew and fired, shoulders and arm muscles slipping and sliding gracefully about. This arrow strikes the target in the head, directly between the 'eyes'. She lowers the bow with a grin. /Now/ she's getting the feel of it!

Levi claps quietly. "Your aim is impressive, Miss Grace."

Nick halfheartedly smiles. Levi notices, "Are you not impressed, Master Ridley?"

"Yes, I am, Levi," Nick clears his throat nervously, "Just go get an apple."

"Yes, Master Ridley," Levi stands and walks out of the room and gets an apple and soon returns, Nick opening the door for him.

As Levi returns, he responds to Ron, "It takes roughly 300-400 MegaPascals to register a hit. To crush the entirr target, it takes roughly 800 MegaPascals. MegaPascals are used to measure force. I was using roughly double of each."

Nick smiles as Grace comes over. At her comment, he looks confused for a second, but then grins, "Of course not. I'm just not used to having people shoot things off my head." He bumps her gently with his shoulder, "But I trust ya."

Grace searches Nick's face with dark blue eyes, not really sure what she's trying to look for... but she feels like he's at least /trying/ to be honest. She starts to relax a little again, and tries for a small smile, being bumped and swaying unexpectedly. /That/ makes her relax the rest of the way.

She takes the apple from Levi with a quick but sincere, "Thanks Levi--" then says encouragingly to Nick, "Well you should! I've never hit anything alive with my practicing, and I'm not gonna start now!" Her confidence is surprising, and hopefully reassuring.

Standing up, she takes Nick's wrist and puts the apple in his palm. "Here-- just go down the range a little bit. Not too far-- don't get hit by anybody /else/, y'know!-- but wherever it doesn't make you as nervous."

She waits at the bench, taking out an arrow and putting it to the string, pulling the bow a few times while she waits. Her adrenaline is up, but with excitement, not with nerves. As every teen is prone to, making a good impression on her friends and seeming at least a /little/ bit 'cool' is pretty important to her just now.

This was no longer practice, it was showing off. So Goldenrod saw no reason not to invoke the blessing of Artemis on the young winged archer. Quietly, of course.

(Grace gets an accuracy buff^_^)

"Well, babe, you did kind of use your courtroom voice. Y'know, the one where you're staring down some dirtbag from across the room, psyching him out while cross-examining him? But all is forgiven." he said, kissing her on the cheek.

Sam spent several minutes stretching, then he did a nimble kip-up and had Rotten Luck alter a portion of the landscape to resemble a city intersection with a multitude of targets. He faced the arrangement of targets and studied the position of each, putting together the battlefield in his head. "Alright, let's dance."

His dull amber psychokinetic armor snapped into place and he fired glowing strands at two targets forty-five degrees from each other. The bulbs at the ends of those strands smashed into targets and detonated with concussive force, destroying the targets. Before the strands had even hit their targets, he had turned and fired two elastic strands on either side of another target. They stuck to the wall behind it and catapulted him towards the target. He smashed into the target with both legs extended, wiping out the top half of it, then spread his arms and legs and hit the wall, sticking to it.

Vaulting off the wall, he turned in mid-air and fired two elastic strands at the moving aerial target. In response, it sped up and began zig-zagging evasively, pulling him across the room. He released his strands and smashed into a stationary flying target with his shoulder, knocking it from the sky, then tumbled across the roof of a low building. He came to his feet and did a running leap off the edge of the building. Flying across the avenue, he landed on the back of another stationary flyer and punched it in the head with a glowing fist. He rode the "dead" target down, then leaped off it's back to hurtle between two standing targets, dispatching both of them with backfists to the head. He finally tumbled into the last group of target and became a blur of motion, dispatching the five of them with a flurry of kicks, punches, and close-range strandwork.

Sam stood up and calmly brushed himself off, then whirled suddenly and fired a bulbed strand up into the air, where it impacted the moving flyer and the concussive force flung it into a building. He then turned back to the group, sketched a shallow bow, and trotted back over to sit with Sarah.