Thrust
Thrust
“See!” Ripple emphatically nodded his head. “It’s alllll good! You can trust me…and since we’re starting to trust each other, you know, how about putting in a good word for me with the commander? You know…a little…consideration….a reward, maybe. I mean, I am rolling on some very dangerous people here.”
“I thought you said your team wasn’t a danger to anyone?” Willow asked.
“Wel yeahhhhhh, for the most part, yeah. But there are some people who made it really clear on day one that they wouldn’t like people cutting and running on them. Thrust for instance. She’s notttttt going to like me after I teleport you guys into our base.”
–Ripple’s interrogation by Willow
Green Duelist looked for a moment at the illusionary mob swarming the island, then calmly looked back at Danny and Gyges. He raised his gun. “It was a nice move, but I can tell which are real and which aren’t.”
“Yes. Gyges said. “But do you trust that she can do the same?”
Green Duelist thought for the span of a heartbeat then lowered his gun. “Thrust.” He spoke over the noosphere. “We’ve lost. The situation has become untenable.”
–Green Duelist vs Gyges and Danny
Well, thank God Willow and Emmy got Ripple to roll over on Mr. Blue and the Anti’s–especially when it comes to this girl.
No name. All the stuff Ripple’s told us, and we don’t have her name. All the stuff that she willingly told, all the stuff that he learned about her from eavesdropping on his “friend” from a universe away, and not once, not once did he catch her name.
That’s how deep these kids are in. They’re fully immersed in their criminal identities. Their birth names matter as much to the world they live in as a blanket on the moon.
We only know her as Thrust, and we’ll likely only know her as Thrust for some time. She’s another kid from School 1, and while ostensibly they’re supposed to be fully transparent in matters such as this, we all know their procedure for whenever one of their students does something infamous–deny, deflect, then forget.
Personality and History
She’s perhaps the most dangerous member of Mr. Blue’s team of “Anti-Martin’s.” Thrust has just enough self-control to follow his orders–just enough. Temperamental and with a propensity towards violence, Thrust is the muscle of the Anti’s. She doesn’t plan, she reacts, and cooler heads like Green Duelist are responsible for limiting her reactions in the field. She is never sent on a mission alone.
Like Green Duelist, she wasn’t bribed into joining with access to her “perfect reality.” To Thrust, the perfect reality is the one she’s in. She wants to be a career supervillainess and learn the trade from the Brotherhood of the Lion’s factotum. She knows how the game is played–or rather, thinks she knows how the game is played.
Thrust longs to please Mr. Blue. He frustrates and challengers her by critiquing her performance and comparing her to his other students. He doesn’t tell her all the parts of his plans–certainly not as much as he tells Green Duelist–and refuses to tell her more until she earns the privilege. “You know what you need to know, Thrust. Prove to me that you need to know more.”
Thrust doesn’t have a bit of love for Mr. Blue, but he’s the one that holds the keys to her future. He knows everyone in the supervillain community. What he says about her to other people determines her worth. She would kill for a good word, BOL rules be damned. She wants respect and she doesn’t want to wait for it. Mr. Blue telling her that he’s “Spoken about her to certain people” keeps her quiet and in line like nothing else.
Unable to blast Mr. Blue through the planet like she really wants to do, Thrust vents her frustration through proxies. She despises Sand Queen and Ripple for leaving the group not because they betrayed her trust but because they’re free of Mr. Blue’s influence. She listens to Green Duelist only begrudgingly because Green Duelist has Mr. Blue’s respect in a way she doesn’t.
Thrust likes to think she’s professional when on a mission, that she’s all business and by-the-plan and the first one to correct things that go against the plan. But what she really is is ruthless. She believes that random elements that complicate the plan are not to be observed, understood, or talked to. They are to be neutralized as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Thrust has an ego. She’s the prettiest and the strongest in the room and despises anyone that chips away at her self-assurance. She has singled out Tanya Abelman, Martin’s star flyer, as her rival simply because Tanya is a girl that’s very popular and very good at flying–even though they’ve never met. It’s rather disturbing from a psychological standpoint that commonalities that would drive a normal girl to befriend Tanya instead drive Thrust to raging jealousy. Tanya, true to her headstrong personality, isn’t afraid of Thrust. “I’ll take her on anytime, anywhere. She wants a catfight dogfight? Oh yeah, bring it on!”
That’s an obvious problem in the making. We must keep Tanya as far away from Thrust as possible. The safety of our students is our highest priority. If Tanya wants to duel with a crazy girl, she can do it after she graduates.
Thrust, like several members of the Anti’s, was taken by Mr. Blue from the infamous School 1 of London which receives students from all countries of the global federation known as Earth State As a member of Earth State, the UK has what are to America and Japan extremely restrictive controls on superhumans, and these controls extend to superhuman children.
The destructive potential of Thrust’s powers was identified in the womb and suppressed by psycho-reactive implants grafted to her spine, similar to what Tommy Taylor got after he used his powers to turn an auto dealership into a parade, that merged with her biology and grew with her as additional organs.
Her role in Earth State society was decided before she was even born. Her powers would be suppressed to a manifestation of no more than 90 pounds per square inch, less than it takes to puncture human skin, because that was what was decided. She would attend School 1 and learn how to use her breeze-gentle powers to repair electronics, because that was what was decided. She would wear the uniform of School 1 and then the uniform of whatever corporation the government promised her to, because that was what was decided.
Thrust took to heart only one lesson from School 1. It was a lesson School 1 left out of the official curriculum but taught every day–you either make yourself of use, or you get used.
Superhumans that grow up in Earth State countries typically follow one of two paths. Most of them stay and accept their place within the Earth State machine. It’s familiar, it’s comforting, and there’s little risk in following a path set for you as soon as your power is identified. Some of them jump to countries with fewer restrictions like America and Japan once they turn of age. They get to have their implants out and get to experience what it’s like to live in a society ruled by trust instead of fear. They quite like it. It’s why Earth State has to import a population from Universe Eta Tau.
Mr. Blue gave Thrust a third path that offered her something the other two didn’t–revenge against a world that angered her and a good standing among those that also made a living taking vengeance on the world.
Earth State suppressed her powers because they feared her. Now, she wants to surpass their fears. Now, she wants to give them what they tried to prevent and more. Now, she wants to make people feel not as helpless as she felt as a girl, but more helpless.
Hyperstasis
Thrust is a telekinetic, but as anyone familiar with our files on Tommy Taylor and Lucia Regio know, there’s great diversity when it comes to telekinetics. Force applied over a distance–it sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But it’s not.
Her powers activate with physical markers–an orange glow Edith has compared to orange gelatin and Tanya to a sunrise, and a sound like a high-pitched whine combined with a low-pitched, percussive tone. Tanya said Thrust’s powers sound like a jetpack sound effect from one of her favorite video games. Edith said her powers sound like “Something being set on fire and then moving far away really quickly.”
Thrust’s most basic and common power is to create destructive thrusts of kinetic energy. This isn’t where her name comes from, though it would certainly be apt given how fond she is of blanketing an area in orange explosions. Her name comes from her ability to alter the mechanics of energy and her favorite use for this ability–moving by pure thrust.
Thrust can alter the mechanics of energy in two ways. The first is that she can create discontinuities in vectors so that magnitude is conserved while direction is whatever she wants it to be. To put it as simply as possible, she can make things move not as they should. If she hits you with one of her blasts you can find yourself rocketing in any sort of direction. The second is that she can selectively violate Newton’s third law of motion. Forces acting on objects do not have to create an equal and opposite reaction.
Let’s begin addressing Thrust’s control over the mechanics of energy by talking about Ms. Cryptic’s latest problem for her physics class–”How does Thrust move by pure thrust?” Thrust grew up admiring fliers. When you live in Earth State and look up into the sky, you don’t see a lot of people there. Earth State is fiercely protective of its airspace. Thrust would often daydream about rising into the air on her breeze-gentle powers and going far, far away. She learned a little bit about aerodynamics. She learned that thrust was what made an aircraft go forward and drag was what held it back as a result of Newton’s third law. By selectively violating this law, Thrust can fly. She blasts at the ground and allows the third law to create an equal and opposite force to push her into the sky. Once she’s in the sky, she violates the third law by nullifying the force of drag acting on her body. Air should push back at her with an equal and opposite force, but it doesn’t. She flies with all thrust, no drag, and can stop on a dime. She can go from top speed to full stop instantly which makes her fly in what Tanya calls a “graceless, brutal fashion.” There’s no curvature to her flight, it’s all straight, violently quick lines. Thrust doesn’t move her body like other fliers when she flies. She doesn’t recline or tilt. She stands as if the sky was a floor.
Unlike other fliers, Thrust doesn’t “boom” when she comes to an abrupt stop. “Booming” is a technique fliers learn where they redirect the force acting to propel them. They come to a near-instant stop by sending the force elsewhere, often in the form of a “boom” that parts clouds for miles. Cloud sculpting is an important activity for freshman fliers as it allows them to learn how to precisely control their booms.
Strange isn’t it how her powers lend themselves to precise and careful flying and yet through her actions she’s one of the most dangerous fliers we have on record?
Before we talk about how Thrust’s vector discontinuity works with her kinetic blasts, we should talk about her basic kinetic blasts. Thrust is a “blaster” kid, and not a very skilled one. One of the first things we teach our blaster kids is how to make their blasts as small as possible. If they paid attention in Mr. Rich’s Great War in the Air class, they understand why. Atomic bombs, introduced at the start of the war, were quickly replaced by atomic beams because of their inability to penetrate Hercules “man-tank” armors. Atomic bombs produced enough energy to get through Hercules armors, but that energy was spread out over an area. Most of the energy never touched an armor. But atomic beams took the energy of atomic bombs and concentrated them down to a pinpoint capable of shredding Hercules armors like cheese. The same principle applies when we teach our blasters “catch-then-concentrate” against targets. They fire blasts wide to catch fast-moving targets and then shrink the blasts down to destroy the targets.
Thrust doesn’t “catch then concentrate.” She always throws out big explosions likely for the same reason freshmen blasters do–it feels right. It’s probably the same reason she almost always throws her blasts from her hands even though she should be able to throw her blasts from any direction. A telekinetic’s powers are projected from the astral and don’t have to be projected from their body. Adam Brigham’s powers, telekinetically projected hands, do not have to be connected back to him by a string as if they were kites.
One would think someone as experienced as Mr. Teacher would correct Thrust on her rookie mistakes. Perhaps he’s purposefully limiting her so she doesn’t outshine her other teammates and become more rambunctious than she already is. Perhaps he has corrected her but Thrust’s ego won’t let her listen. You can very well imagine her telling Mr. Blue that she knows what works best for her own powers. We’ve heard that line time and time again from our own students.
Hyperstasis are thought-responsive and thought-controlled, thus there are psychosomatic effects for all hyperstasis. If you believe your power is strong, then it will be strong. All the theatrics of superheroics–the battle cries, the supercostumes, the codenames–all serve a practical purpose in psyching up a superhero. If a superhero feels strong, he will be strong through the “psychosomatic boost.”
However, there are times when a psychosomatic boost isn’t worth it. The boost it gives a blaster shooting big explosions because big explosions “feel” stronger to him isn’t worth trying to fight against physics. Smart-alec young blasters sometimes rebel against learning the right way because they don’t want to lose their PS boost. “I can’t shoot a tiny beam, Ms. E! I’ll lose my PS boost and get weak!” They don’t want to take that step backwards to take a leap forwards.
Thrust may very well be headstrong enough to feel that almost exclusively firing from her hands and creating big blasts is ameliorated by the PS boost she gets from doing so. It’s a rookie mistake to fall into the PS boost trap, but she’s made rookie mistake after rookie mistake.
Now that we’ve talked about her regular blasts, let us talk about how she uses her vector discontinuity power with them.
If someone shoots you with a beam, a force will be acted on you in the direction of the beam. If Ms. E punches you, you fly backwards, not forwards or to the side. Not so with Thrust’s blasts. When she shoots a beam at you, she can decide how it moves you. She can move your forward, to the side, or at an angle completely irrespective of how or where she hit you. Once, she suspended an entire island of Beast Folk in floating orange glows with a wave of her hand. They kept flipping over themselves for hours until the energy used on them ran out.
In theory, Thrust can use her vector discontinuity power to make up for the rookie way she uses her blasts. If she catches an opponent in a large blast, she can then then have the energy of her large blast funnel into the opponent and hurt them as if it was concentrated into a small blast to begin with. The problem is, she would have to do this to a target that will be moving and resisting the larger and weaker blast. “Catch-then-concentrate” isn’t just a saying, it’s a technique. It takes a lot of practiced skill to slow a target down and then hold them in place while energy is increased atop them. If Thrust tried to cheat “catch-then-concentrate” with her vector discontinuity, she’d likely mess up and hit her target with a “glancing blow” of sorts.
Ripple has reported observing Thrust using her vector discontinuity power to do more than hold people in the air and bounce them around like pinballs. He’s seen her fire a blast at a target only for the target next to it to explode. Thrust doesn’t have to directly hit something for that something to respond as if she did. Ripple has also seen her shoot a blast at a target dummy’s stomach only for its arm holding a mock sword to go flying off. If Thrust hits you with a blast, she can decide where exactly the damage is dealt.
The Concerning Thing About Thrust
Ripple has reported seeing Thrust make Green Duelist walk in place as a prank to exert power over the teammate who likely intimidates her the most. Green Duelist couldn’t move because his feet failed to produce an equal and opposite reaction from stepping on the floor.
What Ripple said Thrust did to Green Duelist is concerning because it breaks patterns we’ve observed with her powers. Until he reported that, it seemed that Thrust’s control over the third law could only be applied to herself and that her control over vectors could only be applied to her blasts. What she did to Green Duelist shows that she’s working beyond her usual abilities.
What concerns me about Thrust isn’t what she can do, but what she could be able to do in the future. Imagine what she could do if she learns how to apply her control over energy mechanics beyond the narrow scope that has been observed. Imagine her turning herself as invincible as a Vril wall because every force directed against her fails to produce an equal and opposite force meaning mechanical motion stops at her skin. Imagine her redirecting the force produced as others as easily as she redirects the force she produces.
Imagine your heart trying to beat without the third law.
I’m making these speculations not to frighten people but forewarn them. It’s very likely Thrust is unable to alter the behavior of energy to too great an extent. We know that Mr. Blue is able to copy the energy-based powers of others. It’s incredibly likely that he’s copied Thrust’s power, and yet he’s never turned off Newton’s third law for anyone. From his encounter with Tommy and Ms. E, we know that he has Tommy’s ability to grow the strength of his telekinesis over time and we know that he’s had this ability copied since he discovered the back-door Tommy created in the Blueprint. Whatever potential Thrust has, Mr. Blue would have unlocked a long ago. And yet, we don’t see him do so much as fire an orange-colored blast. That’s a good sign.
It is likely that we have seen the extent of Thrust’s powers. But I repeat, it is likely that we have seen the extent of her powers. It is not a certainty.
The Status of Thrust’s Implants
Ripple overheard Mr. Blue telling Green Duelist something that would make Thrust very upset if she found out–Mr. Blue only pretended to remove her implants. They’re still inside her,inert but potentially functional. If Thrust is ever exposed to a certain frequency known only to Mr. Blue, she’ll be back to being as weak as she was as a girl.
For an attack dog like Thrust, it’s probably a good idea to keep a firm leash.
Views on Teammates
Mr. Blue–A surrogate father figure in the worst sense. Her idea of a father is an older male with more power than she has who will give her what she wants if she pleases him.
Sand Queen–Dead meat.
Ripple–Dead meat.
Green Duelist–An extension of Mr. Blue. Reliable, but frustrating to deal with.
Panel–Near worthless tagalong. The best part about him is that he knows how to shut up and stay out of the way.
Sting Ray–Thrust knows what she’s doing and doesn’t mind. If Mr. Blue can’t figure it out, that’s his problem.
Blue Angel–A follower. She has little ambition and is thus of little threat. She does what she’s told and nods her head. She’s useful. She actually thinks everyone is friends. That’s cute. She can be confided in, trusted in, and manipulated.
Cadell–Thrust doesn’t know that Mr. Blue is planning on stealing the CAINNEL from Cadell, but she can tell Cadell is a patsy. Cadell doesn’t know the big rule of the game–you’re either of use or get used. Mr. Blue isn’t training him on how to use the CAINNEL out of the kindness of his heart. Cadell is an investment, Thrust knows that much. What she doesn’t know is how exactly Mr. Blue plans on making Cadell pay out.
Engagement Strategy
I won’t drop names, but some of you have expressed concern over me working on figuring out how to take down the Anti’s. I appreciate the sentiment. You don’t want your vice principal doing the superhuman paramilitary thing, especially when everyone’s favorite multiverse-wide paramilitary group is standing right next to us. But remember what I was before I became vice principal. Remember why I have all sorts of extra-dimensional tools and weapons on a telepathic link. Figuring out how to safely subdue rampaging children with powers beyond their control was my job. I haven’t done it in awhile, but it’s like riding a bike. I just sat down and thought about how to take down the Anti’s and the wheels started turning.
Besides, Ripple being an ex-ARGO Vector and what Commander Victory said during the last meeting about “neutralizing” the Anti’s at all cost has shown us all that ARGO is not at all good with kids. Are the Anti’s outside the scope of what we do at Martin’s? Perhaps. But we’re still the best bet the Anti’s have of getting a happy ending–even Thrust.
Here’s how you defeat Thrust–pull her away from the group using taunts and challenges and get her to focus on one, and only one, target. It’s tempting to recommend dogpiling her as soon as she’s away from her teammates, but Thrust is a bomb, and we want her to explode as little as possible to remove the possibility of anything or anyone getting hurt when it comes time to defuse her.
Given her ability to change the behavior of energy, setting up force screens around the engagement won’t cut it for safety. She needs to be taken off-world. This is not an exaggeration. Don’t trust her to hold back just because she ostensibly follows the BOL code. Don’t trust the screens to not get compromised just because she only seems to use her power in relatively minor ways. Tackle her into the Blueprint if you have to, just do not corner her anywhere close to an inhabited planet.
We need someone durable who can easily teleport her away from Earth. I recommend Mr. Rich and Neiros, though if at all possible I would like to be directly involved in taking down Thrust.
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