Team People: Mudslide
Just a short bit with Mudslide about three or four months after he got his powers. I'm still looking for an origin for his powers, since I decided that he's not a mutant, not magical, and he isn't using a device that grants him his geokinesis. (The current suggestion, from my father, was that he was bitten by a radioactive garden gnome.)
---
"Dave, Dave, Dave, you are a stupid man sometimes," David M. O'Neill muttered to himself as he peeled his shirt off and tossed it in the corner. A massive purple bruise covered one side of his chest, where the would-be mugger had shot him.
"Things we learned today: geokinetically-compacted dirt armor does a fair job as a bullet-proof vest against someone too stupid to get a .45." He gingerly touched the bruise and hissed in pain. "Of course, what the hell do I know about guns? I'm a potter, for Chrissakes."
"I'm a potter who's talking to himself. Let's work on that social life, Davey." He crossed the room to the bathroom and stepped into the shower-stall, then gave his head a good shake. Bits of dirt and tiny pieces of gravel went flying. He seriously needed to work on peeling himself out of the ol' dirt armor or maybe just shave his head.
Action item: Learn to manipulate really, really small pieces of earth, at least as far as convincing them to get away from him.
Sub-Note: He'd been slacking on learning finesse with his power. Bad, Dave. Bad.
Dave stepped out of the shower then ran the water briefly to flush the dirt down the drain. "All right," he said to the mirror. "Let's think about this. I am a skilled potter with a basic grounding in the sciences and liberal arts. I know damn well that one of the most effective defenses against a cannonball were earthworks. So, I should be able to work something out that will stop a high-caliber bullet or six without making all of my armor collapse from the damage."
The mirror didn't pop up with an answer for him. He'd probably have run screaming if it had. There was only a certain level of weirdness he could take, and he had the feeling he was riding the edge right now. Honestly, he probably shouldn't try his hand at vigilantism until he got better at what he did.
'Course, that didn't mean he wouldn't handle a crime he happened across in-progress. Sure, he wasn't exactly law-enforcement, but the police were rarely on the scene exactly when you needed them, in his experience.
Dave pulled off the rest of his clothes, a bit of the dirt embedded in his jeans falling off, and started a shower.
The way bullets worked, if he understood correctly, was basically putting a whole lot of momentum behind a piece of metal. Recoil would be that good ol' "equal and opposite reaction".
Now a bullet went through you because your skin and meat wasn't tough enough to take the exchanged momentum without breaking. So it broke, and the bullet hadn't lost all of its momentum, so it kept going until it did. Sometimes this left you with ugly exit wounds.
He reached for the shampoo and lathered it into his hair. It was easier to break something thin. "Strength in numbers" worked for molecules as well as for bigger things. He tried to keep his armor light so it wouldn't be as exhausting to carry, but that also meant it was kinda thin.
Action item: Develop his 'endurance' for using his power.
Sub-Note: This was possible. He'd started out with barely the ability to lift a handful of dirt. Now he was wearing enough earth to provide credible armor for up to an hour at a time without feeling particularly drained.
Dave used a washcloth to swipe a bunch of lather off his forehead before it went into his eyes.
There were different kinds of thickness and thinness, though. Water was thicker than air, but not in the same way that say, three inches was thicker than one inch. So...
He frowned and reached for the shampoo bottle again. So. C'mon, brain, let's follow this line of thought to its conclusion.
So, thicker armor didn't have to mean that it- And here he had to use a mental image to convey what he was thinking: the difference between an egg shell and a brick wall. His armor didn't have to be brick-wall thick. It could be compact, like using a colored pencil to remove all the white from a particular space.
It sounded like it was going to call for both endurance- and finesse-training to pull this off the way he wanted to.
Oh, and somewhere in there, he'd have to find time to throw pots so he could pay his rent.
---
"Dave, Dave, Dave, you are a stupid man sometimes," David M. O'Neill muttered to himself as he peeled his shirt off and tossed it in the corner. A massive purple bruise covered one side of his chest, where the would-be mugger had shot him.
"Things we learned today: geokinetically-compacted dirt armor does a fair job as a bullet-proof vest against someone too stupid to get a .45." He gingerly touched the bruise and hissed in pain. "Of course, what the hell do I know about guns? I'm a potter, for Chrissakes."
"I'm a potter who's talking to himself. Let's work on that social life, Davey." He crossed the room to the bathroom and stepped into the shower-stall, then gave his head a good shake. Bits of dirt and tiny pieces of gravel went flying. He seriously needed to work on peeling himself out of the ol' dirt armor or maybe just shave his head.
Action item: Learn to manipulate really, really small pieces of earth, at least as far as convincing them to get away from him.
Sub-Note: He'd been slacking on learning finesse with his power. Bad, Dave. Bad.
Dave stepped out of the shower then ran the water briefly to flush the dirt down the drain. "All right," he said to the mirror. "Let's think about this. I am a skilled potter with a basic grounding in the sciences and liberal arts. I know damn well that one of the most effective defenses against a cannonball were earthworks. So, I should be able to work something out that will stop a high-caliber bullet or six without making all of my armor collapse from the damage."
The mirror didn't pop up with an answer for him. He'd probably have run screaming if it had. There was only a certain level of weirdness he could take, and he had the feeling he was riding the edge right now. Honestly, he probably shouldn't try his hand at vigilantism until he got better at what he did.
'Course, that didn't mean he wouldn't handle a crime he happened across in-progress. Sure, he wasn't exactly law-enforcement, but the police were rarely on the scene exactly when you needed them, in his experience.
Dave pulled off the rest of his clothes, a bit of the dirt embedded in his jeans falling off, and started a shower.
The way bullets worked, if he understood correctly, was basically putting a whole lot of momentum behind a piece of metal. Recoil would be that good ol' "equal and opposite reaction".
Now a bullet went through you because your skin and meat wasn't tough enough to take the exchanged momentum without breaking. So it broke, and the bullet hadn't lost all of its momentum, so it kept going until it did. Sometimes this left you with ugly exit wounds.
He reached for the shampoo and lathered it into his hair. It was easier to break something thin. "Strength in numbers" worked for molecules as well as for bigger things. He tried to keep his armor light so it wouldn't be as exhausting to carry, but that also meant it was kinda thin.
Action item: Develop his 'endurance' for using his power.
Sub-Note: This was possible. He'd started out with barely the ability to lift a handful of dirt. Now he was wearing enough earth to provide credible armor for up to an hour at a time without feeling particularly drained.
Dave used a washcloth to swipe a bunch of lather off his forehead before it went into his eyes.
There were different kinds of thickness and thinness, though. Water was thicker than air, but not in the same way that say, three inches was thicker than one inch. So...
He frowned and reached for the shampoo bottle again. So. C'mon, brain, let's follow this line of thought to its conclusion.
So, thicker armor didn't have to mean that it- And here he had to use a mental image to convey what he was thinking: the difference between an egg shell and a brick wall. His armor didn't have to be brick-wall thick. It could be compact, like using a colored pencil to remove all the white from a particular space.
It sounded like it was going to call for both endurance- and finesse-training to pull this off the way he wanted to.
Oh, and somewhere in there, he'd have to find time to throw pots so he could pay his rent.