Return from the Brink

[JW%]

((Sign up thread is here:

tsdcv3.proboards.com/thread/5892/return-brink-ooc

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The city was mostly abandoned. A sharp drop in population had left people with more than enough space to move about, and focus had been placed on something other than high rise towers of industry and bureaucracy. Few of these towers were lit on the skyline any more, the electricity going to other uses. But the city was hardly crumbling. Community gardens had sprung up in nearly every neighborhood, supplying food to the small population clusters while the massive corporate farms had outproduced themselves and failed, leaving fertile fields miles away from town untended. With the shut down of the massive incinerators to dispose of the diseased dead, air pollution had been reduced to almost nothing, as traffic was limited and industrial plants had followed the same as the corporate farms.

What had grown during the dark times was the hospitals and nursing homes. Huge sprawling campuses dedicated to health care had grown into their own self contained cities within the larger city. Clean, luxurious, and highly populated with industrious workers, these were where civilization had retreated to.

The Chiron Institute probably looked like yet another hospital to the new arrivals as they were shuttled in. Walled and gated, with the buildings great curved structures of gleaming glass and large sprawling park areas built into area to make the place far more relaxing and enjoyable than many of the tighter tenement buildings that were already falling into unsafe levels of disrepair. But in truth this facility held more in common with a college campus than a hospital.

Statues dotted the park like areas, but one of the largest dominated the walk leading to the entrance. It depicted a young boy wielding a spear and missing an arm, standing atop what looked like a cross between a whale and a battleship. Flanking the boy were three other boys and two girls, each dressed in identical padded body suits that all seemed to have suffered some kind of damage, each wielding a unique weapon as though fending off advances from all sides as the spear user led them into battle.

A plaque beneath the statue gave a memorial statement to the first Guardians, known to the world as Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Black, and White. Their own names, Ryan, Benjamin, Austin, Lyra, Zephyrine, and Brian, were listed as well as their date of death and a note about how their bravery and suffering has led the world to a place of hope.

Since then several generations of new Guardians have come, and passed. The augmentation process that was originally created has been refined and expanded on, creating the cure for the plague that swept the world. Now the latest generation has arrived for their final training, the arduous process of augmenting their bodies split over several years as they developed, their bodies crafted into something more than human and potentials within their minds unlocked in ways they have only just now begun to realize.

A smiling face would greet them as they came in, the large man, the name plate saying 'Cueva Mahogany' behind the curved front desk glancing at them and offering a small packet which included a key card on a lanyard. "Your rooms are on the second floor, and our elevators are working. Please, unpack and make yourselves at home. Meet your fellow trainees. Before you go, could you touch your finger to this metal plate? It will trigger your body sheath to start forming for the first time. It will probably feel funny at first, but you'll need it in a little bit. The quarter master, Sergeant Stoneguard wants to check your final fittings and your new trainer, Sergeant Anderson, will be calling for you at two fifteen. If you have any questions, myself or miss Manzanita work the help desk, and I'm sure everyone else here will be happy to help you out. Good luck, and welcome to Chiron base."

[JW%]

The small environmentally friendly bus that dropped Patricia Hawke off had come from one of those larger hospitals. She was still recovering from her augmentation process and felt very woozy. Her skin itched. Legend had it that the original Guardians had their skin stripped from their bodies and then had been forced to walk the salt flats to absorb solar radiation and mineral content through their open bloody wounds. The second generation had gone without that upgrade, and in the long run had shown themselves less durable. Patty on the other hand had been in a tanning booth flooded with a mineral water solution for several days. Her body had gone from being so overly sensitive after the bandages were taken off to itching horribly. She'd only just been allowed to rub itching cream onto herself before being told she was heading off to Chiron Institute, what had probably been a college campus before the fall, and had been retrofitted into a military base, of sorts, within recent years.

As she stepped out her pigtails bounced a little and she took a moment to look at the statue. Lyra always looked so pretty with her short not quite shoulder length hair. Patty had needed to argue with the doctors about keeping her hair, but in the end the process didn't require her head to be shaved... though it probably would have helped with her dandruff from some of the things they did to her to encourage cellular regeneration. Still, Lyra wasn't her favorite of the first Guardians, for some reason Austin and Zeph, with their gung ho, hot blooded justice attitudes felt more right to her.

And then she was distracted by a fountain that seemed to grow out of a tree just beyond the statue, and eventually made her way inside.

She smiled and waved at Mister Mahogany and looked at everyone else that had arrived. Only one or two it seemed. Maybe everyone else was on a different bus? Or maybe there just weren't that many of them... so many of the other candidates had washed out of the program during the surgeries...

She pressed her hand against the metal plate and then jerked it back with a little yelp. She gave a hesitant smile as she realized she was being silly and apologized to Mister Mahogany. "Sorry... it sorta shocked me... like a little tingling. I guess it's supposed to do that." Or maybe she just had a static charge.

She put on a brave face and tried to skip over to the elevator, but her suit case slowed her down. By the time she was pushing the button for the second floor the tingling in her hands had diffused it's way up her arm to the point where she didn't notice it any more. She looked at her hand a moment and frowned. Still skin colored, and she could still make out her fingernails and palm lines. No body sheath.

The hallway curved and had an open window on one side, looking down into one of the courtyards and parking lots. She checked her key card and found her room, marked in a sort of pale yellow. It was a cheerful color and the doors here seemed to denote seven various shades of the rainbow. Inside he apartment was already furnished. A good sized bedroom off to the side, a bathroom with full sized bathtub, a kitchen with refrigerator, sink, stove, and microwave. She climbed up on the counter top and opened some of the cabinets to find a few dishes and other necessary items, but mostly empty open space.

Bouncing down she started to unpack. There was a large couch and some soft looking chairs that she sat in each in turn to see which was her favorite before she started putting up some small items on the shelves around the television and the large sliding glass wall that looked out on the inner courtyard and training area.

A giggle bubbled out of her. This wasn't the most luxurious place she'd ever lived in her very short life, but it was much better than the hospital rooms she had spent the last several years in as her body had been upgraded piece at a time. She put the little toy her father had given her, a figurine of one of the heroines from a childrens show he had enjoyed when he was younger. The heroines bird/jet motif had always fascinated Patty, and she had watched the program her father had while she was in therapy, gaining a new level of appreciation for it, despite the silliness of it. Her mother and father had been alive when the first Guardians had arisen, and watched all the generations pass by so far, even going so far as to volunteer their daughter to be one of them.

"Attlevey!" Patty jumped at the voice and looked around for it. "Is it mid-vrek already? I must not be very good at my job. Still, it's been droad without a little ooma like you to talk with." She was searching around for the voice before she noticed the clock mounted on the wall. It glass and the surrounding of it was shaped like a feline of only slightly cartoonish proportions.

"Oh, hello. Are you watching me from there?" She asked. "Are you mister Stoneguard?"

"No... shhhh, don't tell him. I know he's a total frood and all, but I don't want to start any dalika."

"A dalika would be bad?" Patty asked, trying to parse the voice. It sounded absolutely nothing like her father, but it had a fatherly tone about it, even if the cadence and the strange word choice made it seem to be more like something a crazy aunt would say.

"Absolutely drumdick." This seemed to be agreement even as the eyes of the cat shifted about. "You won't tell anyone will you? Be our little secret I snuck into the base."

Patty climbed up on the back of the chair, balancing as she tipped it forward. Some physical therapy sessions were designed to help people walk... hers had presented her with gymnastics. She could walk a tight rope blind folded.

"This isn't a camera..." She said after a study of the clock. "You're not... in the base... you're..."

"...IN the base." The reply came with emphasis on the word. "Yep. Though the eyes technically are cameras."

"So you're an AI?"

"One of the first. Before the bad ones started taking over."

"You mean the 'locks?" Patty asked.

"Uh huh. Their Brass Army division... I've fought some of them before. They tried to reprogram us. I guess I'm sorta a Guardian like you must be. I'm going to kinda be your roommate I guess, since I try to help out around here. Let me tell you it's groshing to have someone to talk to again."

"You don't talk to anyone?"

"Only Guardians." Came the reply. "I'm still trying to hide from that thalldrap Anderson. She nearly erased me from the system last time, and I don't know how long I've been recompiling myself. Oh! And I talk with Tick Tock if he's still around."

"Who?"

"He's the big brass man that was supposed to be the butler for the Guardians. If he's about it would be just derisann to say attlevey to him, he probably gets droad too."

"I'll try." Patty said curiously. "What do I call you?"

"What do I look like?"

"You look like a glass cat wall clock."

"Then call me that."

"Okay, you're our AlarmCat then." Patty gave a great big smile and jumped off the back of the chair, landing lightly on the carpet. She glanced over at the mirror and then blinked before looking at her hands.

They were coated in what looked like thin, tight, yellow gloves. She flexed them and checked the palms and the backs. Her finger prints were gone, and lines running up her arms ended in a ring on her palm. She touched her neck as she looked in the mirror to see that it too had been covered, then she started to strip. Sure enough, her body sheath had fully formed.

"What time is it?"

"I... uh... can't see my own face." The cat admitted. "I think it's about fourteen fourteen, or two fourteen if you're using a twelve hour clock. Am I twelve hour?"

"I need to go meet Mister Stoneguard then." Patty said.

"Okay, he's in the supply room. I could guide you there if you want, but don't tell anyone. They get worried when I start playing with lights and such. Even if a bunch of them are froods that really know where their towel is at, there's always those drumdick floops that ruin it for everyone."

"I should be able to find my way. They gave me a map!" Patty said finding the packet and pulling out the map of the compound.

By now everyone elses body suit would have formed as well, and it was time for official welcoming and getting to work.

[Penny Royals]

Disgusting.

The statues were absolutely disgusting. Standing ten feet high, kept pristine in lovingly molded clay. Each and every detail about the guardians of old etched out before him, nothing kept safe or sacred. Each strand of Austin's ponytail, each freckle on Lyra's cheeks, each tattoo on Ben's arm, the strain of Zephyrine's arms, the gap between Ryan's teeth. Everything exactly as it had been in their lives, replicated for the enjoyment of the masses.

And he'd had to sit through hour after hour in classes learning about each and every one of them, and worst of all about this stupid statue. He never wanted to see it, to come face-to-face with the squishy-faced ghosts of the past, but it was just his luck to be chosen for the extensive mission of being a guardian.

Colin took a deep breath, casting his eyes over at them, factoids spilling over in his head. Zephyrine had died when a rock from a volcanic eruption crushed her, Austin had given up his life to save the world while piloting a giant mecha. Brian had died in the worst form of irony he'd ever heard of - eyes had only just grown back after an accident during augmentation, and he'd payed less attention to his surroundings than he had during his blindness. Ryan would have found monsters far harder to fight with only one arm, ripped apart by one his surviving teammates killed. And then there were Lyra and Ben - disappeared, they said, as if vanishing could mean they still survived out there in the world.

His duffel bag bounced against his side while he stared straight ahead, uneasiness churning in his stomach as he passed by the statues. The door to the main dorms was inside, Cueva waiting for them all to get in. He forced himself into a state of normalcy - people didn't like it when he slouched or brooded. He put on a smile, pushing his hair back and standing to the full extent of his 6'3 height, going to the desk. He barely got a word in before being passed his keycard and touching the plate, blinded briefly by a flash of light. He'd been warned of this - nothing would happen, not at first. He waved goodbye to Cuevo, anxiously pumping his hands while going to wait for the elevator. Once inside, he leaned against the wall, crossing his arms to wait for it to reach his floor.

His room was more spacious than Patty's, furniture sparse, with a large mat at the center. The kitchen attached to the living room, partitioned off, and the next room over was his bedroom, smaller, with a large, long bed draped in white sheets. He dropped off his bag, and went to examine the view off the deck, overlooking the courtyard and other buildings. A few hanging flower pots were draped off of the railing.

He fell back into his usual state of being, going back inside and sitting down for a moment on one of the high chairs near the windows, spinning before noticing the bar and mirrors on the wall adjacent to the door. He pushed himself off of the chair, slipping off his shoes and sitting down on the pastel green mat, stretching out his legs and watching himself twist.

That had been the good part of the augmentation process. His physical therapy of choice, which he'd been in before even starting, had been dance, specializing in ballet. Originally started after he was healed enough from a broken femur in childhood, he'd never stopped and continued with it until the previous month, when all of this was really starting to crack down.

He stood up, going over more to the bar. It was appropriately high, as his leg went to rest on it and he grabbed it to steady himself as he went down to touch his opposite toe. Something caught his eye in the mirror.

White material - he presumed some form of latex - was growing out of his finger tips, slowly easing its way up his fingers and hands. He shuddered, unprepared, losing his balance and crashing against a nearby table, knocking it over.

It took a second to recover from that, hands still shaking as he realized he didn't break anything, and that nobody was around to be angry at him even if he did. He shut his eyes for a second, taking a few deep breaths before standing back up, righting the table, and checking the clock on the wall.

Time to meet the others...

[lovely corte]

He couldn't wait. Honestly.

Sitting in the back of a town car, awkwardly sat between two caring, loving, doting and oh-so incredibly controlling older women employed by his father to replace both him and his mother, the bodyguard and the lawyer. Not to mention the five bags sitting in the back.

It was all a bit much and Juni was visually uncomfortable, shoulders hunched up to his elbows. In fact, the second the car stopped, he grabbed the single backpack between his knees and bolted from the ride, yelling out his goodbyes and evading with expert, augmented and natural-gifted speed. They gave chase but it was no use and in all eventuality they'd just leave.

With only a slight pant, unusual given he just took off sprinting, he stopped just in front of the statue so many others before him did. It was so realistic. Clay gave form to being so life-like Juni almost felt in awe next to them. Especially the form of Ryan, who was Red like him.

He always wanted to be like Ryan. It was a disappointment when he found out he had no skill with the spear itself, but he hoped he could have the renowned leadership skills that he was known to the world for, having lead the Guardians to their final moments. He hoped to one day lead, just like him, as he should as he continued the Red Guardian legacy.

A few moments later, he paced the statue, taking in each individual detail, amazed at how much went into it truly. Individual strands of hair, individual imperfections and even the outlines of the Benjamin's tattoos, for the pinnacle of Man and the Harbingers of the New World, they were just like him.

His whole life, the stories and the legends, rounded up right here in front of him. His family was obsessed with the First Guardians, his father (an elderly man just barely clinging to life but still virile enough to pump his nine wives) was a man who was adamantly staunch that his son be a Guardian, but never the Blue one. He claimed that was the place of traitors.

The whole process of getting to his room from there was rather quick. He kept to himself, quiet, quick, got to where he needed to be and never stopped. In fact, in his haste, he hadn't even realized the dissipation of the tingling sensation in his arms and the presence of a latex-filament over his skin until he was called to the meeting room.

Barely any time to get situated.

He left promptly, map and packet in hand and lanyard wrapped around his wrist as he pushed past the other rooms and on his way.

[JW%]

((Feel free to do a flashback of arrival, reaction to statue, meeting a south american Cave Johnson at the front desk, and getting unpacked and situated if you haven't yet and would like. I'm going to try to hurry this along until we get fully settled in.))

The main supply room was separate from the building that housed their apartments, the help desk, a cafeteria, some offices for officers, and on the third floor a massive recreation room with a full gym, squash court, and indoor diving pool. Not that all the buildings didn't have their own supply rooms, it was just that the main one was dedicated to it. The exterior looking much like the other buildings, while the interior had been cleared out until it resembled a massive warehouse.

Supply Sergeant Tuttle Stoneguard, who never went by his first name, was a small mountain of a man, burly and stout while still being reasonably tall, with curly dark hair that went into a beard. He also had a boisterous smile and an accent that sort of came and went as he was paying attention, sometimes making it hard to understand him.

"Ack, I see the wee ones are ready to get started. Alright, alright, gather 'round an' form a line." He looked them all over with an appraising eye, the other eye covered in a patch with signs of a scar around it. "Not all o' ya are so wee seems like." He nodded approvingly as he took a headcount. "Thas good. Always hated the idea of sending kids onna battlefield. But I see ya're suited up already. Your Commander Anderson will explain more o' that hersself, but part of it's my job too. See, those suits yer wear'n now are bonded to you. You grow 'em like the hair on your legs, and can pull 'em back inta you like goosebumps. You've all seen the Guardians suit up in probably a flash o' light or flame or wotnot, aye? Well, you kin probably do that youself. Problem being that doing that will tear up whatever clothing you're wearing. Letting that undersuit grow out slowly over about ten, twenty minutes time, that keeps your clothing from tearing up and me from need'n to requisition you a new uniform each time you go out into battle or just into training. Your Commander Anderson is gonna want you to practice suiting up and down for a bit I expect, and I won't mind a few accidents where your outer uniform goes foof when you need to armor up, but try to be mindful, aye?"

He looked them over, giving a reassuring smile to all of them, before pulling out a heavy metal box. "Now none'o you have your full armor plating installed yet. Your bodies are probably ready for 'em, but the suits themselves pull a bit of energy from your bodies, and the armor even more so. You can ask Doc' Hatchet how it works, I just know the squishy sparky bits. What I do know is that we want you practicing in just those body suits for the first couple of days. But you'll notice that those body suits ain't protecting yer faces. Not like the last batch, and they had issues breath'n when the mask covered their nose and mouth. So we're going back to helmets." He opened the case and inside the padding was a sectioned metal collar, a jewel on the front of it and some kind of plug on the back. "These here go around your neck. That thingy on the front is a backup battery for that power your body puts out. You'll have to charge it up by wearing it before we'll give you yer armor or let you play with your jet cycles. That thing on the back matches up with the connector on your suit on the back of your neck. By the time you get to your Commander Anderson you should be able to call up your helmet out of this collar and keep your face safe without having any trouble breathing or talking."

It was a lot to pick up, and Patty had been distracted by something standing against the wall while Stoneguard talked. Curiously she wandered away from the group and looked at it.

"Thas TickTock." Stoneguard said, and Patty looked over her shoulder at him blinking innocently. "One of the first of the Brass Army by our estimation. Pure robot. We managed to salvage him and he works around here, sometimes, when I can get him to do anything like sort the shelves or hauling heavy objects."

"Oh." Patty said thoughtfully. "Uh... Attlevey Mister TickTock." Patty said, and the brass figure snapped into motion, the head turning slowly but stiffly first one side or the other, then leaning forward with one arm raising to tip the brim of his round British Officers helmet.

"Hello to. You as well. Little girl." He said, the brass moustache twitching over the small speaker holes that served as his mouth. Patty caught that one jeweled eye clicked closed and then open again in a wink.

"Was that some kind of activation word?" Stoneguard asked. "I know he's voice activated, but he's always just been a dumb robot I keep around because I love antiques. He represents one of the greatest threats that the Guardians ever faced."

"To my. Great shame." TickTock said. "My blueprints. Stolen. My brothers. Corrupted by. Bad Programming. Forgive me. You had more to say, Mister Stoneguard." It seemed the more he talked the better the language parser became. Or perhaps it just grew easy to understand the robots pauses as unintentional.

"Quite so." Stoneguard agreed, pulling up another case and opening it. Inside the padding again were what looked like small metal flashlights. "These will be your main weapons." Stoneguard explained passing them out. "Hardened outer case, and you can snap them out to twice the length for short staff stick fighting style."

"What's the button there do?" One of the children asked.

"Two stage trigger switch." Stoneguard explained, taking a demo version and pointing it at the wall. A red dot appeared on the wall and he wiggled it around. "Targeting laser pointer. Second stage is a small yield compression blast. Think of it as an always loaded low caliber pistol with a silencer." He glanced at Patty who was playing with hers. "Don't point it at your face!" Stoneguard snapped, his voice getting loud enough to echo in the warehouse walls.

Startled, Patty dropped her small baton. It fell from her hands and then curved in it's fall, snapping into place on her hip where another metallic strip marked her suit and give it the few highlights that broke up the solid coloring.

"Thas another feature." Stoneguard said. "They try to automatically holster themselves when not in use so you don't have to think about them and they won't get lost if you have to drop them for some reason." He sighed, frustrated. "Now these are weapons, not toys. Don't point them at your own face, and don't point them at each other. You could get hurt. I've got things that make bigger holes in monsters that I'm supposed to give you after your done training, but we need to know we can trust you with the little stuff first. Alright?" He gave them each a hard look before nodding. "Any questions before I turn you over to your Commander Anderson?"

[Alkonost Storm]

Bags in hand, Andreia made her way towards building, stopping briefly to admire the statue of the Guardians Triumphant. Naturally, she was here to follow in their footsteps. Quickly going inside, she looked around, wondering where it was she could leave her things and if there was anyone she needed to meet first.

[JW%]

Andreia, despite being a little late, was given much the same treatment as the others. A small bag with instructions and a map, a lanyard with a key card that opened the blue green marked door on the second floor, a luxurious but still obviously intended for only one person apartment, being watched by a glass cat in her living room who was busy speaking with some one else and couldn't spare the extra processing cycles to mentally be in two places at once, having her turquoise tights appear on her body slowly over the next ten minutes as she settled herself in, and catching up to the group as Stoneguard was handing out the equipment.

[JW%]

There didn't seem to be any questions, so body suits spraypainted onto them and slave collars locked around their necks, batons holstered on their hip, they were marched outside. The area was open air and very park-like, with a running track surrounded by small trees and shrubbery, along with the occasional bench or flower bed.

"Line up. Attention!" Snapped an unlikely voice.

The first thing you noticed about her was that she was pale and thin, the fact that she was wearing bulky combat boots and cargo pants but had stripped down to a tight tank top made it even more obvious, the heavy equipment on her belt making it almost seem as if this was the top and bottom of two different people. Under the tank top one could almost see her ribs, and she had practically no bosom. Her skin was light, as was her hair. She wasn't particularly tall either, with a few of her new 'cadets' towering over her.

"Colin, Juni, Andreia, Patty..." She listed off their names looking at each one of them as if she was trying to drill into their soul with her gaze. The fact that she didn't look at any of them very long made it less uncomfortable than it would become later when she really started to focus on them. "Right then." She gave a nod. "I am Sergeant Johanna Anderson, and while you are staying in my institute it is my job to see that none of you fuck up more than the previous batches of so called Guardians. So, a quick rundown of the weapons you have so far." She started to walk in front of them.

"First, your body. Each of you has been augmented at the most profound levels your body can withstand. Twenty years ago you wouldn't have been considered human even. Your cells regenerate more quickly and more precisely, which is why none of you have any scars any more. Your nervous system is more conductive and your body is capable of producing magnitudes more electrical potential than any base line human. Your muscles are increased, all your senses heightened, and your bones not only heal faster and better, but now can withstand more force before taking a serious break. Out of the entire human population left on this world, only a few can survive the augmentations that have been layered into you. Already, you are exceedingly expensive, but if you think that makes you special, you're wrong. I've had most of these augmentations built into me, even though they say that I wouldn't survive a complete package like all of you have. So that means, in a straight up fight, I've probably got all of you beaten already. Your body is a weapon, I'm here to teach you how to wield it properly. Understand?"

She gave them a glare which was more disturbing than intimidating. She did look like she was waiting for one of these new recruits to try to do something, perhaps make a move on her.

"Alright. Next weapon you have, your body sheath, it stores itself in beneath a layer of your skin, broken down into a liquid. Under normal circumstances that material will read your thoughts via your bodies electrical impulses and form in about thirty to fifteen minutes at will. You may need to focus your mind to will it into existence with gestures or code words or whatever helps you focus. You've seen the mantra's of past Guardians I assume. And yes, it's absolutely form fitting and reveals exactly the size of a package you have." She gave Juni and Colin a look that said she wasn't impressed. They weren't exactly indecently exposed, but they did border on it. Details like nipples were glossed over by the material, but larger bulges were quite obvious and each butt cheek was individually painted with the suit. "The body sheath serves several very important functions. First of all, once fully summoned from your body, it networks itself into a separate material, linked to your nervous system by skin contact, but not actually connected to you any more. This material can draw power from your bodies increased electrical potential. The first and foremost way it utilizes that power is to speed up the summoning process. You can turbo charge getting dressed in the morning and summon your suit in between five seconds to a quarter of a second, depending on how much energy you pour into it. A lot of energy is wasted doing this, causing often a flash and the destruction of anything you're wearing at the time, but when you need your suit right this second you'll be glad you called it. This evening I want you all to practice summoning and dispelling your suit at high speed. I'm told doing this feels like the fifth orgasm you've had in a hard session. It still gives you a thrill, but it hurts and you just feel sore from it. Get used to that, and build up your endurance."

"You'll need it because the suits are necessary. That link to your bodies electrical field is what makes you a guardian. At it's weakest it's used to generate a chromoelectric field, aligning the molecular structure of what wants to be a body condom into something harder than steel. In a non-newtonian way of course. Now that was a bunch of big words for you, wasn't it? Most of you may have studied and actually know what they mean, but it's not until you've actually experienced it does it really click." She looked them over. "Juni! Step up here and show them what I mean."

Johanna didn't really give him a choice in the matter. She just pulled her baton and discharged it into his stomach. There was a popping sound, and the boy in the rust colored suit with the shaved head went flying backwards and landed a few paces away on his rear.

Patty was suddenly glad she hadn't accidentally fired hers into her face.

"Now, that didn't hurt, did it?" Johanna said, walking over and looking down at him. Surprisingly he hadn't really experienced any pain, just surprise. There had been the sensation of impact, lifting him off his feet and unbalancing him, and he felt a little sore where he had been hit, but that felt more like the jolt he would have gotten from walking on shag carpet and then touching a metal pole. Except with his stomach. "If it did, suck it up. That was a practice setting and you should be able to punch harder than that by the time we're done with you."

"So you've got body armor. It's not perfect, won't stop any bullets that deserve the name, but for surviving a fall or trading punches with each other, it should do fine. And yes, this chromoelectric field is installed in police body armor. We don't generate or harness the same level of bio energy you do, so that's why we have belts with battery packs, and why if Juni here had braced himself, his field would have extended down through the soles of his feet and bonded him with the ground, letting him take that hit without even flinching." She gave her hip a pat on the bulky belt and hip pouch she was wearing. Unlike their batons, hers had a power cable running to her belt.

"And that doesn't mean you don't have a battery pack of your own." Johanna continued, reaching out and tapping Andreia's throat where her collar was. "That little jewel on each of your neck is going to take a few days of charging up as you wear it and exercise, but eventually you'll be ready to pull the impossible stunts you've probably seen other Guardians performing." She stepped back and looked at the group. "Thing is, you're still going to be limited by the amount of power your body puts out, and the amount of control your brain and nervous system can exert. That's why each Guardian seems to have their own set of individual powers, like how Guardian Yellow threw lightning or how Guardian Amethyst made crystal walls. All the same basic abilities, just expressed in different ways, like how we can all talk, but our voices are different. That's also why Guardians need to be on a team. You fill each others weaknesses, and when necessary you can pool your power supplies to boost your defenses, or offense."

"And that brings me to your new batons, which we are going to be practicing with after you all put your helmets up." She gestured that they should do it now. "The ones you have are practice. They lack the focusing crystals your final ones will have, which means you can get used to thumping each other like you were swinging a billy club, or you can practice your aim. When you get good at basic martial arts and incorporating your powers into them, we'll take away the nerf toys and you can play with something like this..."

Johanna disconnected her baton and swapped out a different one as she stepped over to one of the well trimmed trees. With her full power baton ready, she flicked the trigger with her thumb. A crackling pop and a hum could be heard, but more importantly a glowing blade extended from the baton. Wide and flat, with a prong as though imitating the hilt guard of a butterfly blade. With a swipe she cut a branch from the tree, then caught it with her blade, held it balanced on the flat for a moment to show there was physical force to the blade, not just glowing energy, and then twisted her baton in a complex move, throwing the branch up into the air as though she was disarming an opponent. At the apex of the branches flight, Johanna aimed her bladed baton at the branch and the blade turned into a bolt of pinkish plasma that destroyed the bit of flying greenery with a much louder cracking sound.

Johanna thumbed off her weapon and it became a normal baton again instead of the handle for a glowing butterfly blade. Her belt battery pack was almost dead after that display, but the Guardians would have far better stamina she hoped.

"We get light sabers?" Patty breathed.

"The shape your energy construct weapon will take is based on your personality, just like what... 'element'" Johanna said the word like she hated using such inaccurate terminology, "that you manipulate is going to be unique to you."

"... we get green lantern rings?" Patty corrected herself.

"Helmets up! We don't need more brain damage on the first day." Johanna snapped. "Let's teach you some Tai Chi. It's good for focusing your bodies energy."