The Great Toilet Battle

Welp, he was at it again, with a full grin on his face and all.  Jeremy had antagonized a pair of bullies and was now running for it as they wanted to pummel him.  Well, that would be pretty hard for them to do, he knew that he was at an advantage, even though it looked as though he wasn't.  One of them was wielding a pencil, probably to stab him once they caught up.  The other had a baseball bat from the gym, that was the more dangerous foe at the moment.  He just needed to get into a restroom, the toilets had water in them that he could use to quite literally give them a slip.

He looked from his left to his right weaving his way through the crowd.  There has to be a restroom her- there!  One to his right, a good ways off, but worth it.  This was his first week fighting bullies within the school, and he wasn't completely prepared, but he did have one tool.  He slid into the restroom, zipped open his backpack to reveal an empty jug.  He then got  to work as the crowds were still packed.  His free hour shouldn't have been used like this, but oh well.  He started using his powers to move the toilet water into the jug.  Once he was done, he pulled the jug out, put the backpack on, then tucked it in like a football.  He ran back out of the restroom as quick as he could, right as the bullies were closing in on it.  Thank goodness he was getting significantly better with this power, if that was his normal speed, he would've been a bloody pulp.

He started running as quick as he could until he could find an underpopulated spot to duke it out with these pricks.  This led him to a dead-end at the corner  of the school.  This was a bad place to be to be honest...  But at least he wasn't gonna risk hitting classmates here.  He turned towards his aggressors and got ready with his jug of toilet water.  There was a bit of a crowd looking towards him and the bullies as they now had their would-be prey caught in a would-be trap.  Of course, none of that was actually how it was gonna turn out, he had the advantage now.

"Let's break him dude!"

"Yeah, show this super-powered punk why you don't mess with tougher kids!"

The two approached Jeremy as he unscrewed the cap to the jug.  "Can you knuckleheads even think straight?  I have you both beat!  Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dum over here are about to go to the nurse's office for  picking on people!"  He did enjoy making a show out of it sometimes, it made him feel more confident, also satisfied with their predictable reactions.  The pair got even angrier at the insult and both charged towards Jeremy.  He, of course, wanted this.  With a final twist, the let the water spill across the floor and push against them, causing the pair to fall backwards, then he heated the water up to a painful amount, just enough to make them think twice about it again.  Of course though, they didn't listen.

He turned around as they got up and let them charge him again, this time slashing at them to trip them and give them a few cuts.  After that, they were still persistent on taking him on, even though they really didn't stand much of a chance.  They charged one last time as the splashed the water all over them.  This did lead to him being hit by the bat and good God did it hurt!  He just barely got out of the pencil slash though.  The two had him in a corner and were about to have their way with pummeling him until they realized something was off...  They were REALLY cold.  Jeremy had rapidly cooled the water down now to freeze them up and dull their movements.  Now it was just a matter of getting them to surrender.

He got up and moved towards the crowd of onlookers.   As he did  so, he raised the water over their heads and dumped it all on them.  After that,  he cooled it all down slowing them down  completely into shivering messes.  After they fell to the ground, he kicked away their weapons and returned the water to the jug.  He put his shoe over the one who originally had the bat and looked down at his face with a dead series expression, "Try me next time and see how that goes, pricks."  With that, he stepped off, picked  up the jug and put it back into his backpack.  He'd have to dump that water soon, it might be useful, but it's still toilet water.  After that,  he walked back into the crowd, hoping he didn't beat them too badly.

Dolores was casually walking to the cafeteria during her free period when she heard quite a bit of ruckus down the hall from where she was. Her curiosity piqued, she followed the sound of it and saw a bit of a crowd had already gathered. Raising herself up onto her tiptoes, she managed to see what looked like one kid with some water-manipulating power soaking two other students with water. She felt she was late to the party and had missed some key point of interest, but felt up to speed when she heard the super say "Try me next time and see how that goes, pricks."
Well, this guy's an ass. Dolores thought to herself. As he disappeared into the crowd, she followed after him, not wanting to let someone get away with hurting other students for no good reason. She rather quickly caught up to him and grabbed his arm, forcing him to turn around. "Hey. What the hell was that about?" She asked aggressively. "You're a super, clearly. Shouldn't you be focused on, I don't know, using your gifts to help people instead of giving them hypothermia?" She rather roughly shoved him back, glaring at him.

As Jeremy left, he heard someone seemingly angry with him about that little engagement. Once she was done berating him, he begun to happily turn around to respond. Only to get a shove once he was fully turned around and stumbling back a foot. "Woah! Jeez, lemme speak first lady!" He took a moment to get a hold of himself again and look over this random girl. She was cute, though that was unimportant right now she was the crazy girl shoving him for taking on bullies! Okay, get your head together, aaaaand good.

"Those guys went out of their way to just treat everyone else like crap, they had it coming! Also, neither of them are getting hypothermia, they just got a bit of a chill so they wouldn't go around attacking people smaller or weaker than them for a while. The closest thing to permanent was a few cuts left by the water, albeit toilet water, but still, it was helping people, just not those two jerks!" He glared back at her now. Mostly because of the shove, but partly because he really wanted to defend his point there! Also, jeez that bat hit still hurt REALLY bad. Just hide it, it's not there, it's no- it's there. Pretend it isn't for a while! Yes, Jeremy was in fact standing slightly awkwardly, as if trying to avoid limping to one side and trying to stand straight.

Dolores crossed her arms and pursed her lips as she stared at the boy, processing what he was saying. She eyed him up and down and finally let out a sigh. "It's Dolores. Not 'lady'." She finally said. "And you say they were treating people like crap? I guess that... Sort of justifies what you did. A little excessive, but..." She looked at how he was standing. "Considering it looks like you got hit back, seems to balance the scale."
Dolores sighed and shrugged; she had heard that some of the other students were starting to meddle with the bullies around school, and she had to admit, it sounded appealing, but she still wasn't sure if what she saw was totally fine. "You have a name?"

The girl seemed to calm down now.  Good, now maybe she won't shove him again.  Okay, so her name was Dolores, good to know.  Though...  He didn't do good enough at hiding the pain of a baseball bat.  Great...  Okay.  He gave a shrug, "If I could hold them down without all but beating them down, I would, buuut...  I don't have that kind of trick yet."  He rubbed his wound and leaned against the hallway to let himself rest.  He'd just get over it.

Now she wanted his name, makes sense, she did give her's.  Jeremy pushed himself off of the wall, put on a friendly grin, and extended a hand, "Name's Jeremy, nice to meet you, Dolores!  He continued trying to hide the fact that yeah, he was in a bit of pain, almost as if to hide weakness from people outside of the crowd.

After they hopefully shook hands and exchanged greetings, he had to ask, "So, what made you go out of your way to chase me after I was done with those bullies? Wouldn't most people avoid the superpowered kid who just attacked random people?" He thought she might have been a super as well, though he wasn't exactly sure yet, she could have been really ballsy.

Dolores took Jeremy's hand and shook it tentatively; she still wasn't sure how she felt about him, but he certainly didn't seem intentionally malicious. Assuming she was wrong about her initial impression of him, she relaxed and leaned against the wall next to him. "Well, frankly, I thought you were the bully. Couldn't exactly let you get away with just attacking to classmates without some form of confrontation." She smirked. "I'm a super, too. So, the way I see it, it's my job to help stand up for non-supers. Hence why I was so hostile when I thought you were a super who was just being a dick."
She eyed Jeremy up and down. "Alright, my turn for a question. Why are you going around looking for trouble with these kinda guys? Even if you are a super, going into a two on one fight isn't the brightest of ideas unless you've got some training. Why'd you pick that sort of fight?" Every once in a while as the two talked, Dolores's eyes would drift down to Jeremy's leg; she knew she was more than capable of helping him, but she wanted to get more of a feel for him before intentionally bringing his pain onto herself.

"Yeah... I could be a bully... Kinda boring though, more fun bullying the bullies, they're assholes already and keeping them in line keeps all the people who want to just get through school safe." Jeremy smirked at her remark at being a super. It made sense that she would stand up to him if she had some sort of power. "Makes sense, good job on standing up for others! Even though... They didn't deserve it... But still good job!"

He had another question, but he'd be better off answering her's first. "Well, the first incident started when I kinda got sick of this one kid whose now expelled for picking on me every day. We kinda... 'Pranked' him. It got out of hand fast, he stabbed one of my friends, got expelled and we both burned and froze him at the same time. Kinda a whole revenge thing and... Not our proudest moments." He gave a shrug, it being in the past made him over it already. Chris was gonna be okay, and thank goodness he wasn't in this school anymore. "We kinda agreed that doing this was kinda fun, though we focused more on taking down bullies rather than petty revenge. I had my eye on those two guys individually for a while now, but well... They were about to mess with another kid, I had a wad of paper and well... Two annoyed bullies and one fight later... Here we are." Honestly, the whole wad of paper thing was a little embarrassing, though the really embarrassing thing was the fact that he decided that it was better not to bide his time and to just go in at that very moment... "In hindsight... Not a great idea, got hit by a baseball bat and yeah... I'd have been better off waiting..." That was probably a lot more information than she needed, oh well.

Though now that she confirmed his suspicions, he had to ask, "Alright, so you trying to be a hero as well?"

Dolores's eyes widened when Jeremy told his story. "Wait, that whole incident was you? Jeeeesus... I heard about that whole, well... Debacle! Damn, that's impressive." She laughed for a moment before continuing.
"Am I trying to be a hero?" She repeated his question, not entirely sure herself. "More or less, yeah. I just... Well, people can sometimes get the wrong idea about supers, especially when they have 'deviant' powers, so if being a hero is what it takes to change their minds on that, then yeah. I am trying to be a hero." After her little speech, she shook her head and brushed her brown bangs out of her face. "Sorry, I know, sounds a bit grandiose. But it's how I feel."

Jeremy let out a laugh at Dolores's expression at her finding out that he was the cause of the whole Chris incident. "Yeah, I guess. Could've gone better. I mean, less of us could've been stabbed. Dude's fine now, though was really disappointed that someone else got hurt over the shenanigans that I started there." He leaned into the wall, still ignoring the pain, it was getting less severe and clearly nothing was broken. Just hurt badly.

He thought over her response carefully, she wanted to be a hero to paint a better picture of supers... That's... Definitely a better reason than he has to become a hero. He just wants to hit people that did bad things really really hard and do good things, no truly great purpose behind his intentions. Well, other than the beating bad people thing, that was pretty good. "It's a good reason. Certainly beats my reasons. I'd say stick to it and keep it to heart or whatever parents say." Though, he was now curious about her power, he wouldn't pry. It was clear he wasn't being secretive of his at all, but she might be and it'd be better if she didn't know.

A few moments of silence passed as Dolores leaned against the wall, turning things over in her mind. After a short while, she spoke again. "So you said you and your friends do this sort of thing on the regular now? Going and messing with bullies, shit like that?" She asked, sounding intrigued. "What would I have to do to join up with your group? I've got quite a bit of free time these days, so it might be a good way for me to help kill time and do some good."
Dolores pointed at Jeremy's leg. "I can give a quick demonstration of what I can do if you want. I think it's something you can appreciate." Dolores was more than willing to show off half of her power to new people; she found people were less judgmental of what she could do if that's what they saw her do to start with, especially if she took away their pain specifically.

Jeremy had to take a moment to think about that...  How did they let new people in...  No one has even thought about that out of the three of them.  They probably should have thought this through more.  After another silent moment of thought right after the first, he had an idea though, "Really we just do it, so there isn't  any real goal you have to aim for to join.  We don't really have rules or anything as it's like three of us.  So uhh, yeah.  Welcome to a bunch of random teenagers who beat up bullies in their free time!"  He extended a hand to 'officially' welcome Dolores.

"Oh?  Sure, go ahead.  Seeing new powers is pretty cool."  What could her power be and why would he appreciate it?  That just made him more curious to be honest.  Welp, now was as good a time than ever to find out.

Without much thought, Dolores took Jeremy's hand and smiled warmly, but gripped on a bit tighter than he was likely expecting. This was mostly to prevent him from pulling away before she had a chance to use her power. As she held on for the next few seconds, Jeremy would feel all the pain in his leg begin to lessen, until it was completely gone. During this process, Dolores's eye twitched involuntarily and she forgot to breath, resulting in her gasping for breath when she finally let go of his hand. She stumbled back one step and leaned against the wall, visibly taking her leg off the ground as she readjusted to the injury she had just taken from him. There was a few moments of silence as she caught her breath before cracking a grin again. "Betchya weren't expecting that when you got out of bed today." She remarked, her voice trying to be jovial, but still wavering slightly.

Jeremy simply stared as she took his hand, this was a little odd, the smile was comforting though. He started feeling uncomfortable as his hand was being gripped rather tightly. Within a few seconds, all his pain was gone. That was odd... He felt well. "Wow, you have a healing abili- oh!" As she twitched in pain and stumbled, he instantly went to help her. Why would she take his pain and put it onto herself, that has to be incredibly painful.

Once she was leaning against the wall, he got back to where he was. She was right though, he really wasn't expecting that when he got outta bed this morning. He really wanted to help her out now, because she's basically taking the pain he got for making a dumb decision over running in outnumbered. "You can transfer pain? Can you give it back? I don't want to cause you pain for my stupidity." He felt really bad now, seriously. She didn't sound well at all.

She laughed as he started asking more about her power. "Yeah, I can give it back. That's the part most people tend to remember in my experience." She rubbed the side of her leg. "And don't worry about it. I take pain worse than this all the time; you get used to it. Besides, the worst part is the actual transfer." After a moment, her shoulders relaxed slightly. "Feeling better already." She flashed a charming smile.
Even with her reassuring words, Dolores stuffed her hands into her sweatshirt's pockets, gripping tightly onto her pill bottle. She wasn't stupid enough to take anything in front of a relative stranger, let alone someone she intended to be super-heroing alongside, but just holding the bottle helped calm her down.
"But yeah; pain and small injuries. I can take them from people, and I can give my own to them if I want. So, yeah. An 'unhealing healer', I guess."

"Wait, you can give it back too!?  That's cool!"  He felt really bad that she went out of her way to carry his pain though.  He let it happen to himself and he kinda deserved it for being dumb.  She then started to relax, and gave a smile.  Maybe she was better, she acted like it.  Though he was hiding wounds just earlier.  Maybe she was doing the same thing...  Better not pry and just hope she's alright.  "So long as you're not too hurt."

She then explained her power ever further.   So she literally just transferred pain.  "Can you move pain from one person to you to another?  That could be useful in helping friends and stopping enemies."  It wasn't the most heroic power, but she clearly had good intentions.

Dolores nodded. "Yup, that's the long and short of it. I have to move it through me first, though; can't just hop it from an ally straight to a baddie. Which kinda sucks, but hey, if that's the worst part, I'd say it's pretty good overall." She let out another light laugh and leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes for a moment, collecting her thoughts. After a moment, she decided to ask Jeremy about what he could do. "And from what I saw, you can throw around water and change its temperature, yeah? Certainly flashier than what I can do." She cocked a grin at him.

"Heh, fair enough. I bet you'll do some good with that one day!" He crossed his arms and thought about all the practical purposes it could have. A bit risky due to the nature of a fight, but with help, it can be used to her advantage. Maybe they'd make a pretty good team after all, he could mix that ability in pretty well just by being distractivng while she's in pain.

"I manipulate water. I can move a few gallons of it at I think thirty miles per hour? Pretty fast. I like to use them like blades at that speed as it can cut someone very easily. I can also manipulate the temperature of water to just above freezing and just below boiling. It's a bit flashy, but also really useful in a fight." He didn't have any water at the moment sadly, it was heavy and he really didn't feel like carrying a gallon around everyone during school.

Dolores nodded as she listened. "Flashy and useful. Kinda the 'name brand' hero, I like it." She responded with a grin. A moment passed and she pushed off the wall. "Well, free period's nearly over, so we should probably consider getting on with our day. But, uh, before you take off-" Dolores reached into her pocket and handed him her phone. "Put your number in, and I'll shoot you a text later on so you have my number too. Then when you and your friends need another pair of hands for hero-ing, call me up." She flashed a friendly smile at Jeremy; he was a strange kid, but by no means the strangest that she knew, and he seemed like someone she could safely learn her powers alongside.

Jeremy chuckled at the brand name hero idea.  It hadn't really crossed his mind.  Huh, he could do that and it would work out rather well.  He should keep that in mind.  That could definitely help him out in the future.  "Thanks, never thought of it that way, but damn...  You're right."

She then pointed out that their free period was almost done.  He glanced up at the time, and noticed that yeah, they seriously had basically chatted the entire rest of the period.  Then she  handed him her phone and told him to put her number in.  "Good idea.  I'll be sure to get call you if I find something you might enjoy to deal with!"  He typed in his phone number, put his name in it, then handed it back to her.  With that, he pushed himself off the wall and got ready to head out, "If that pain you took gets to be too much, go ahead and pass it back.  See you later, Dolores!"  With that, he put his backpack on and headed to his next class.