2013.09.26 - No Suit for the Sporting Goods Store

Soho, scene of a local sporting goods store 'Uncle Jimmy's Outdoor Adventures and Other Activities Emporium'. Yeah, loads of stuff in here, from golf clubs to rifles to kayaks to- Oh look! MMA and boxing equipment! And it is here that Courtney Whitmore is causing a ruckus. Quite the ruckus. More of a fracas, really.
	It all started two hours ago, when the cheerleaders of Metropolus University (the A-squad, not those lame B-squaders or flag and band people) had broken up from their latest practice. Some of the girls had wanted one Miss Whitmore to come back to the sorority house, to talk about her upcoming pledge and prepare her for what Hell Week would be like. But the blonde, having been a superhero for several years now, figured she was good to go for anything they could throw at her and had some other stuff to do. Like email Karen Starr an update on the equipment they needed for the campus gym, since the Head of the Athletic Department was far too busy watching boys tackle other boys and figuring out how to spend all of the grant given to the university to bother with such things. And replace her kickboxing gloves, and maybe get a new bag for her apartment so she could show Cassie some of her wicked cool moves.
	That's what led her to the store. Once there, she'd wasted zero time opening up boxes and trying on as many gloves in as many styles, weights, sizes, and colors as possible, much to the dismay of the store staff who weren't allowed to tick off customers but still had to clean up after them. And that was before she'd started kicking and punching at the display bags. ...And then promptly kicked over a large pyramid of neatly-displayed running shoes. And THEN gone right back to kicking at the bag.
	"HA! HA! HIIIIIYAH!" The braces-wearing blonde, still in her cheerleading uniform, but now with shinguards and hot pink MMA gloves strapped to her hands, strikes the bag with each exhalation, while a VERY ticked-off-looking young man and his trainee-for-the-day struggle not to scream at her. The manager has no such compunction, though, storming out of his office, winding through the aisles, a balding man with a pushbroom mustache looking like a bull ready to mow something down.
	"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON OVER HERE!?"
Courtney is not the only rather exuberant young adult visiting the store today. Enter Sasha Myers who is definitely looking rather energetic. The sheer size of the place is daunting to her but, this is her first day out and about since the encounter at the park that left her hospitalized. Immediately she starts moving through the store, looking at all the different goodies in the place. 
Sasha is moving quick for someone reccently recently hospitalized. She is favoring her torso though, showing that she is not entirely 100 yet. Her eyes scan the signs above each aisle. Sadly this is a bad idea as she moves past the excited girl going through MMA stuff. Without warning an evil box appears under her feet resulting in a trip. "AHhhh!" Quickly shot staggers to gain some sort of balance. That fails. Down she falls into a pile of boxes and gloves. Thankfully those are padded because the cry that is heard next is nothing short of loud. "OWWWWW!!! oWo wow owow ouchie!!!" She clenches her torso hoping that she only stretched something.
	"What is going on sir, is your store has been commendeered by a couple of teenagers." Hans says calmly as he approaches, black suit seeming to indicate he is anything but an average young man. He looks to the two girls and then looks to Manager. "I assure you, any damages done by these two will be compensated." He says calmly as if that can placate the manager as he stands between the men and the girls, his voice possessing a thick german accent.
	The manager turns around at the sound of someone falling, before pointing at Sasha and bellowing in his best man-voice, which is pretty darned loud, "I ain't gettin' sued for this, this is on you!" He shakes a meaty finger at Courtney. "Can't you read the sign? NO PUNCHING THE DISPLAYS!" The blonde, meanwhile, has stopped mid-kick to stare blank-faced at the recent accident and the store manager.
	"HIYYYY- Huh?" Yeah, there she stands, one leg half up in the air, pink-gloved hands curled into fists, thin yellow eyebrows up as her ponytail defies the pause in the rest of her body to continue swinging around on its own momentum. She'd almost look like she was in the middle of a cheer-pose, what with the uniform and all, if it weren't for the fact that she was wearing kickboxing gear and doing that pose right in front of a still-swinging bag.
	"Well... how can I know to buy if I can't try?" She fires back, which looks like it's about to lead to a shouting match as the two store employees quickly become as busy as they can cleaning up. But the timely arrival of Hans stops any such thing.
	The portly manager glares at the suited man, then at the cheerleader, then at the sprawled-out musician. "Just don't be causing any more damage!" he snarls before storming off, probably to do some more paperwork or browse facebook on his office computer or whatever store managers did when they weren't in the front of the store.
	"Hey thanks!" Courtney offers as she begins to unstrap the gloves from her hands, quickly walking over to offer Sasha a hand to her feet. "Do I, uh, know you or something?" And then, to Sasha, she flashes a quick, apologetic grin, braces and all. "Y'okay? Didn't mean to send boxes flying all over!"
Sasha accepts the hand up. Immediately she pulls her shirt up to take a look. There for all to see is two inches of stitched flesh which happens to have a small dot of red showing through. "OWWW!" She says again and quickly puts her shirt back down to use it as a bandage and stop the bleeding. 
"It's fine. Really. I shouldn't have come out so early. I just couldn't stay cooped up anymore. Nice to meet you, Sasha is my name." She comments to Courtney and then she turns to Hans and nods to him, "So we meet again? Thank you for helping smooth things over with the manager." Then to both of them. "Don't worry, I will be fine." She states this as she is holding her stomach wound. 
Sasha looks around and finds a seat that would normally be used to try on shoes. She takes a seat on it to let some of the pain subside. "Good thing I don't have too far to go to get home now. If I was still in my old apartment, I would be going all the way across town!" She gives a little giggle.
	"No but she knows me." Hans says once the manager walks off and he smiles to them. "If I may ask, what happened?" He asks with curiosity to Sasha before turning to Courtney. "Hans Gunsche." He says as he offers her his hand.
	"That looks bad." The blonde-haired cheerleader states the obvious as disgruntled workers continue to re-package and stack boxes behind her. She'd had injuries just as bad, but she also had Justice League medical care and insurance. So she'd only had to deal with a few days or soreness. And the disappointed and worried looks of her comrades. And a candlelight vigil outside her hotel room from some of her more ADAMANT Stargirl fanboys/girls.
	"Uh, yeah, same here." Courtney replies, rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly. Maybe next time she'd just take the store associate's recommendation rather than kicking around boxes for injured people to trip on. Live and learn. "Courtney. You, like... need some help getting home or a cab or something?" A beat, before she blurts out, "You're not really gonna /sue/ me, are you?"
	When Hans offers his hand, she takes it, giving a hearty shake, for a teenaged girl anyway. Without her belt on, she didn't exactly have superstrength at the moment. "Courtney Whitmore, Met U cheerleader, and soon-to-be sister of the Phi-Gamma-Phi sorority, nice to meet'cha." She introduces herself with a cheeky grin, listing off her titles like they were something to be proud of. At least she doesn't blurt out 'Stargirl and Justice League Hall-of-Famer' along with them. Lord knows enough people knew her secret identity already.
	Including the Metropolis University cheer squad and half of Blue Valley High!
"Sasha Myers, Local Musician and a featured performer for Tony Stark's Christmas party this year. No I am not going to sue you. It was partially my fault. I wasn't looking where I was going and I was already injured." The young woman dusts herself off a little bit. She turns to Hans. "I might start to think you are stalking me Hans." She gives a little laugh. 
Her eyes shift to the signs again. "Where in the world are they!" Her eyes squint and at the far end of the store she sees her quarry. "Ah ha! Got it!" She begins walking in the direction slowly. "I am wanting to check out the bows and arrows. I am going to be getting some solid instruction."
	"If I was stalking you, Dame Myers, I would have saved you from being injured. truth is I came here to see what kind of physical training equipment I could purchase. I do not want to be getting out of shape." Hans says and when Courtney introduces herself, he smiles and nods. "Hans Gunsche. German mutant coming to try and bring some of my family's antiquity's over to museums and learn how to best apply your american ideas to best aid my country." He says as smiles, shaking her hand softly. He then turns his gaze to Sasha. "Whom is training you to use the bow and arrow?" He asks curiously.
	"Bow and arrows? That's kind of a weird thing for an instrument-player to want. You gonna be the next Green Arrow or something?" Courtney watches the other girl walk away, towards the area where they keep the deadly archery equipment for competitions and hunting or whatever else one might need a bow for. Probably didn't have boxing-glove arrows, though, or Stargirl would likely have already been shooting them all over the store. "Well, hey! Thanks for not suing or anything!"
	When Hans mentions that he's a mutant, Courtney's eyebrows shoot up towards her hairline and she leans back a bit. "Wow, pretty open about that. I thought most mutants hid that part of them. Is that the 'politically correct' term for it, mutants? Should I say 'otherwise evolved' or something? Sorry, you're just the first one I've met. Er, that I know of."
	She looks left, then looks right, then looks down at her uniform, "Whelp! I should, uh, probably go home and change and stuff." She says, even as her butt hits a stool so she can start unstrapping the hard plastic shinguards from around her calves. "Before it gets too late to be wandering around in my extracurricular uniform and I just start to come off as one of those weirdos whose cheer-life defines their entire life."
Sasha turns around looks at Courtney and gives her a smile, "Something like that." Then to Han's "One of two people actually. It depends on who the two in question think would be the better choice for me. The choice is between Lady Sif and Wonder Woman." She gives a smile to them. 
Then she turns to Courtney and gives her a small grin, "You seem to know your way around this stuff more then I do, would you like to help me? I mean I don't know how much stretching I am going to be doing to get one of those things and I don't even know what kind of arrows to get and such." Then back to Hans, "It would be a good idea not to talk about that event. I am still trying to understand what in the world attacked me. All I know is I shouldn't be alive. If not for Hulkling showing up when he did, I would be gone. It was just... really horrible." The young lady begins looking distressed.
	Hans shrugs. "My mutant power is relatively unknown and I am not really like most. I do not wish to be a normal person." Hans says with a friendly smile. "Well I dont care what I am called, been called alot of things." He says with a friendly smile to Courtney and chuckles. "Well if it makes you feel any better, you will probably my favorite cheerleader there is." He says with a smile to the blonde before turning to Sasha and nods. "Then lets not talk of it. Seeing you alive and happy is the more important thing." He says to the woman with a friendly smile on his face. "As those two teaching you, I only know Sif through myths and stories, and Wonder Woman...even less. Still both are powerful heroes so if anyone can teach you how to fight it will be them." He says with a nod. "I only train to keep in shape. I am probably horrible in a fight." He says with a chuckle.
	"About bows? Nnnnnnot really." Lawn darts was the closest she'd ever come. Courtney looks up from where she's taking off the second of the guards. "Wonder Woman, huh? I know... of her." And Wonder Girl. And Superman. And Green Lantern. And and and. And she thought SHE was bad with this whole 'secret identity' thing! This girl told perfect strangers she was hanging out with Justice League members. "I didn't know she was taking on students. Thought she only trained people from The-... Themy... Themys... Amazonia."
	Idly, she wonders if Cassie knew about this, something she'd have to ask her when she got back to the apartment. And, more importantly, would it cut into HER training time with the dark-haired Amazonian! "Y'ask me, you should both just learn how to punch people. Or kick them." Finally done, she tosses her previous would-be purchases over her shoulder with no thought to putting them back in the box they should go in, heading down the aisle with all the bows, so she can stop talking OVER the aisles at Sasha, lifting her gym bag over her shoulder (because it has her cosmic rod in it), her hands planted on her hips.
	"Don't worry, I'm EVERYONE'S favorite cheerleader." She looks the bows up and down for a brief momen. "You should just get a gun. Easier. And probably not tell everyone Wonder Woman's your friend. She's probably got powerful enemies like, I don't know, Galacticorseid just itching to make mincemeat out of her friends. But, if you MUST... probably get the fanciest one they got with snazzy sight-assists and stuff. Y'know, until you get better."
Sasha Myers shakes her head. "I never said she was. You said that. I actually don't know her at all. I am meaning to ask her though. Actually Lady Sif knows her and was going to talk with her concerning me. I am somewhat new to trying to protect myself." She then eyes Courtney. It doesn't take a whole lot to realize this girl is possibly a heroine herself, judging by the company she keeps. 
"Ummm You don't drain people's life force do you?" She asks Han's rather pointedly. "If so I am going to run." She seriously looks like she is about to take off already.
	"Guns are harder to get and ammo is just as hard." Hans says to her and then chuckles at Sasha's comment. "My ability is constant regeneration. In short my body's own natural healing process is amplified so fatal wounds heal in a matter of hours." Hans explains to her.
	"Well hey, I don't know! You said either she or that other lady was gonna train you." Courtney throws her hands up in the gesticular approximation of not knowing anything. "What do I know of superheroes and their bidness. Why not just ask Robin Hood or his sidekick, what was his name? Heck, you could just take karate lessons down at the Y! Trying to fend off evil with a bow and arrow seems like the kind of thing that takes years and years to learn. Why not get something more immediate and easy-to-pick-up until that person you named can line up the most awesome tutor in the universe?"
	She frowns at Hans, giving him the once over, before raising her eyebrows and smirking, just a bit. "Healing? Nice. Gotta get me some of that. Then I could spend less time hiding bumps and bruises with makeup when I box at the gym. I meet all my best friends that way."
Sasha Myers looks at Courtney and gives her a smile, "First off, If The double W says no, Lady Sif will train me. She already made that clear. I am not worried about how long it takes. I am not worried about what kind of crap I am put through to learn it. I will learn and I will do what I can to protect myself and others. I am not going to be a victim ever again." She takes a deep breath. There is some definite indignation in her eyes. "Secondly, You are giving yourself away Courtney." 
Sasha reaches out and takes a bow in her hand. It is not some uber competition bow. It is a composite reflex bow and it is jet black. "Hmmm This one is nice. It is not terribly heavy but umm..." She tries to string it to no avail. "Wow, Okay this thing is tough. Maybe I should speak with a store person?" A glance to Hans is made, "Thank you. That makes me feel a lot safer right now."
	Hans nods. "Indeed, it also slows my aging down so I can be centuries old but look as if I am in my twenties. However my mutant gene activated recently so no old age." He says with a chuckle before looking to the bows looking to the woman and then to the bows again before one is picked and he offers it to her. "This should be within your strength range unless your stronger then you look." He says as he tries to help.
	"Giving myself- Oh, I get it. Okay, ya got me." The blonde holds up her hands and throws her eyes towards the ceiling with a wry grin. "I'm a big superhero fan. I even have the complete Justice League set of collectible action figures. Just don't tell any of the other cheerleaders, okay? I'd be ostracized and stuck on the B-Squad so fast my braces would get left behind. ...Which might not be a bad thing."
	Courtney plants her hands back at her waists, turning her torso slowly from side to side as she chews on her lower lip and looks at the bows. "Sure, that one looks okay, I guess. Stiiiiiill say you should look into something a bit more practical. Oh hey! Do you think they have brass knuckles here? I should check."
	She turns, adjusting the strap on her gym bag, before giving Hans an askance glance. "Geez, you know how to make a girl jealous. Don't even have to get old? Suddenly being human sucks!"
Sasha Myers gives a look to Courtney. "Right. A big JLA fan. I bet." She doesn't sound too convinced honestly. She just laughs. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone what I noticing." She accepts the bow from Hand and handles it a little. It is a bit heavier then the one in her other hand. 
Sasha quickly tries to string it but doesn't get very far. "I should wait for one of the store people or to talk with Sif about it. I think I like this one more though." She holds the one up that she had at first and hands it to Hans.
	Hans nods. "I will go see if I can find a store person to help you." He says as he looks to Courtney and smiles and reaches into his pocket. "Before I leave, Miss Whitmore, may I have your hand?" He asks and moves to set something in her hand which felt cool and glass-like, wrapping Courtney's fingers to enclose it around the object before leaving should she let him.
	"Oh good. Be best if you just didn't tell aaaaanyone near the P-G-P House about it. Apparently being a 'nerd' is still a crime in this day and age." Courtney even lifts her fingers up to air-quote the word 'nerd'. But she fails to spot any brass knuckles sign, not that she leaves the bow hunting section to do it, which probably hurts her chances for spotting such.
	She frowns and holds out her hand when requested, feeling something placed in it. She immediately opens her fingers and looks down to find out what it is, and whatever it happens to be, provided it's not some petrified human finger or something with a clock that's ticking down or a pulsing red light, she sticks it in her gym bag. "Um, thanks?"
	"Okay, I /really/ should get going now. Cassie, that's my room mate, gets ridiculously upset when I'm late for dinner. And I got a test to study for. And Hell Week coming up next week. Nice meeting you both!" Shouldering her back, the blonde in the pleated miniskirt with the little pom-poms on top of her shoes heads for the door and out onto the street!
	It was a polished blue sapphire.
"Right." Then Sasha takes hold of the laminated reflex recurve bow. Carefully she puts the string on one end and then looks at the thing. At first she tries to string it backwards which doesn't work. Then she gets a crazy idea. She uses her foot to hold down the bow and struggles to get the bow strung. It takes a few minutes but it does eventually attach. "Oh wow! This thing has some major force!" She attempts to pull it back. It takes a little Effort but she does manage to get a full draw on it. "Yikes this is tough but i think it could work."
	HAns returns with a store manager and nods to Sasha. "Be careful Dame Myer. I am going to leave you to his capable hands." He says as he gives the woman a nod of his head before leaving.
Sasha Myers nods to Hans. "Have a good Day Hans. THank you for the company!" She dry fires the bow not thinking which upsets the manage a little bit. He guides her to a firing range where she gets her first taste of archery. 
Category:Log