"I definitely bear a nonzero resemblance to Doctor Barker, if I do say so myself. Sand and tungsten I can do, we should mess around in Dr. Barker's concrete room sometime. For now, normal rules, yeah. And go ahead, I'm wearing a cup." Teenagers commenting on his genitals: weird. But teenagers are like that. He moves to a clear area of mat and takes a ready stance.

She launches a few quick jab feints testing Bruce's defence. She is pretty light on her feet and seems to be borrowing a lot from boxing. "So you obviously don't know who I am. Don't watch the news much?"

"Not really. Sorry?" Lately he hasn't been doing much of anything that isn't a) important personal maintenance and job stuff b) worth one or another flavor of points from his power, or c) experimenting with said power. He's kind of a boring person.

"Well better you hear it from me than some idiot on a talk show after I join the protectorate and become newsworthy again. My parents were Empire 88, I was raised in it. Triggered when I was 8. I was called Kristallnacht as a cape back then. I GOT OUT. Ran away to the wards as soon as I could ditch my 'bodyguard' or more accurately my prison guard. I hate the empire got it? so whenever some reporter asks you if you think I still harbor sympathy for their beliefs or if I am some kind of mole for them, remember that I burned three nazis alive in my escape." She scowls and throws a hard punch towards bruce's center mass. She is very emotional about this subject!

Bruce is rather taken aback by this, and reacts by getting punched in the solar plexus. "I'm really sorry to hear that. Um, congratulations on escaping?" He says when he gets his wind back. He doesn't know whether to offer congratulations or condolences on the killing three Nazis, so he just launches a series of jabs at her ribs.

She dances out of the way of two of them but the third hits her below the breast. Her breath huffs out of her. "Sorry. I just deal with a lot of media bullshit and it pisses me off. Now you know anyway." The hit seeming to have shocked her out of her anger a little. She sweeps her leg at Bruce's to try and knock him over.

"It's a very reasonable thing to be pissed off about!" he replies, jumping back from the leg sweep and trying to grab her ankle.

He successfully grabs her ankle and she glares at him having caught her. "You don't seem new at this." Then she twists her whole body so her ankle comes free and kicks Bruce in the chest. Not as hard as she could have but enough to wind him and push him back. Seems she was holding back a bit if she could twist her body like that so easily.

Bruce obeys Newtonian mechanics, which is probably for the best but does put him off-balance. "I started taking martial arts after I triggered. Wanted to get past 'embarrassingly new' before I joined."

"Makes sense." She steps in and tries to slap his defending arm out of the way before throwing a punch at his solar plexus.

Bruce gets punched in the solar plexus. He staggers back a step or two, then recovers and comes in with a roundhouse kick.

She blocks it with her arms but she is considerably lighter than bruce and stumbles back anyway. Newton's laws are so inconvenient. "That's going to leave a bad bruise probably. I think I'm good for now. I could probably eventually beat you but I'd end up too injured to patrol later. Fucking bullshit how much difference weight makes." She rubs at her forearms.

"Yeah, it's pretty bullshit. And part of my being a cut-rate Brute is I heal fast, so I've been trying to build a habit of caring slightly less about injuries to match. I won't be feeling any of this in the morning even though I'm definitely feeling it now." He massages his sore solar plexus and makes a face.

"Unfair! You can train three times as hard and improve just as fast! Healing is such a bullshit power." She huffs and crosses her arms. You can definitely tell she's still a teenager in this moment of immaturity, even though she tries to carry herself like an adult and be seen as one.

"My powerset in general is ridiculous and makes no sense. Do you want to show off yours for a bit? I bet it looks awesome to watch."

"Got anything I can melt that won't turn into deadly fumes? plastic is a no go."

"Hmmm, I have a bunch of stuff but I want to keep most of it . . . What happens if you try to melt something that would normally catch fire first? Like a piece of bread or something."

"Bread goop that then catches fire from being hot enough to melt. Well the part I touched, the heat doesn't travel well enough to melt the rest of the bread. The stuff I'm not actively melting via touch will flash incinerate.

Complex chemistry tends not to survive ultra heating well. If it doesn't burn it separates out into component molecules. Meat does awful things when liquified, worst barbecue ever."

"Bleh, I can only mostly imagine. I bet you make excellent fondue, though. And you could probably do some really interesting things with polymers."

"I tend to heat things past their actual melting point so depends on the cheese and if it gets all burny at high temperatures. Ice to water tends to up with scalding water for example. And water to ice tends to be much colder than freezing point. Anyway thanks for the spar but I gotta go now. Hope you settle in new guy I'll be joining the main team in a few months." And she heads off back to the wards section of the PRT. 

"See you around!" 

He doesn't have any classes today, so after a bit more workout and a shower he heads back to his room and starts looking through the list of gear he can get. Not everything has a weight listed, but he can estimate pretty well. It looks like he'll run out of budget before he runs out of mass limit, but he can get them to run out almost simultaneously if he builds his own taser. So, he checks out the lab spaces.

The lab spaces are gods damned fantastic. Team Tinker's usually have their own private labs with their own built tools but the builder's lab that anyone can use has anything a regular maker would need. Shelves filled with labelled plastic tubs full of parts. Top of the line Lathes and Laser Cutters and Industrial welders and all sorts of gear. Very powerful computers for modelling and physics simulations.

There is a sheet he has to fill out about what parts you took with very reasonable prices for them, And he needs to sign up for computer rendering time since simulations can take hours and hours but it doesn't cost anything. He can use the machines and workspaces at any time as long as one they aren't in use currently and they also cost nothing to use.

Someone must have lobbied the local PRT hard for a good tech space.

This is super neat. He happily spends the next couple hours in the mental state where time means nothing, prototyping a handmade taser.