How Not To Use Cryogenesis

Well, it finally happened. If I could find a time machine, I would set it to earlier this evening, and bash my hair dryer to pieces to prevent this atrocity from ever occurring. There was something of an incident. It turns out, cryogenesis and hairstyling have never before mixed for a damned good reason. I had the coolest hairdo ever, and I pinned it in place with carefully applied ice instead of gel. I took a bajillion pictures, which I will carefully delete from my camera blah blah blah because I'm not an idiot who leaves evidence around. I'm just an idiot. I shocked myself while defrosting my hair. My eye is still twitching, and it's been hours. My hair is... there are no words in the English language to describe my hair. Let's come up with a term that means "resembling a poorly groomed yeti due to cold-induced brittleness and electric shock". But don't put my picture in the dictionary beside it, because I don't want to go down in recorded history as the person with the worst hair day ever including people with lycanthropy.
Uh, gotta cut this short. Still carrying a residual charge and my laptop is freaking out. Ow.

That Funny Taste

Still on a boil water restriction. You know that saying that a watched pot never boils? This might just be me being paranoid, but I think it takes longer for water to boil when I'm around. Is that possible? No, it's just me being paranoid. My cryogenesis can't reach all the way across the kitchen. I'm jumpy around water when other people are around. It's the easiest way to get caught out.
I wonder if this happens to other cryogenetics. I mean, there's no big book of superpowers. There have been a handful of studies, but they're all science gibberish and mostly focused on how much damage we can do to bystanders. There's no cryogenetic support group. I can talk to Myke about superhuman stuff, but I can't ask him if stuff suddenly tastes like peppermint for no reason. Even if I ask another cryogenetic, I probably wouldn't get answers. It's not like we all have the same origin or power level, and some have secondary powers so that really throws off the equation. If something goes wrong with my powers, I don't know if I would even know. For all I know, the peppermint thing is a side effect of a lump of ice building in my brain like a tumor. Or something. I've sworn off all homemade frozen goods for a while. Just in case.

Convenient Cryogenesis

Someone took out the entire county's water supply today. Well, technically it's still there. There are just things in it that aren't water. The news crews were awfully vague about what precisely went wrong, which means it's probably something governmentally hush-hush. Or maybe some M'lar skinny-dipped in the water towers again and nobody wants to make a big thing out of it.
Of course, I found out about this contaminated water stuff in the middle of a shower. So I had to decide between walking around with chlorinated skin and sudsy hair, or using cryogenesis on the sly. What do you think I did? Yeah, I lied to my sister and told her I was already clean and just stealing all her hot water. She's pissed that I got in the shower first, since she didn't get a turn, but since it was contaminated water anyway it all evens out. She's been mocking me, saying maybe it was radioactive water and I'll get superpowers from it. Ha. Ha ha.
Technically I don't really need to take showers. I can make enough water on my skin to keep clean. But I like hot water and the way the water hits my skin, so I take normal showers unless I've touched something extraordinarily gross and I need to get clean immediately. Please don't lecture me about water conservation.
I focused the water out of my hands. All the practice with the sno-cones and stuff helped me pinpoint my cryogenesis. It took forever to wash my hair, since I use very sudsy shampoo and I can't make more water pressure than a faucet, and I was holding back a bit because I didn't want the water to freeze in my hair or get out of control and turn into another sheet of ice. I can make ice a heck of a lot faster than water, for some reason.
I also used cryogenesis to brush my teeth. It saves the drinking water for the rest of my family, who actually need it. And it's not like anyone is checking my water consumption and I need to misdirect them. My family doesn't actually think I have any secrets from them. It could be worse. I could have to deal with the crap Mycroft puts up with.

Sugar and Snowballs

Did you know that cryogenetics and frozen treats have a long and honorable history? It turns out DuBois ice cream was started up by a cryogenetic. I may have to buy some caramel chocolate chip ice cream as a gesture of solidarity with my people. I guess I was reinventing the wheel with my experiments with ice cream and freeze pops. It seems really freaking obvious in retrospect, doesn't it? Yeah, I really need to research the history of my powers some more, or I'm going to wind up looking really stupid in the superhero arena.
I've been thinking of how I can use cryogenesis in my ordinary life if I go public. Whether or not I go pro, I'm going to be a cryogenetic 24/7 for the rest of my life, and I might as well turn that to my advantage. My powers (and a jug of syrup) can win me love and acceptance at any barbecue or picnic. I can drive my own little ice cream truck around and listen to the jingle all day. Hey, a girl's gotta dream.
I'm totally paying my respects to my superhuman heritage (figuratively, of course- my power isn't hereditary) by my quest to create the perfect sno-cone. This has required some rigorous experimentation, of course. There are a lot of variables, such as temperature and granule size. I stayed home while my parents and sister went out, put on a swimming suit and sunscreen (just because I can create ice doesn't mean I'm immune to skin cancer), hauled a jug of grape syrup and a plastic cup and spoon outside, inflated the big rubber ring and floated around the pool idly practicing my cryogenesis. I generally don't go swimming when there's someone else nearby, because the water gets cold awfully fast, and people would wonder why I'm the only one without blue lips. Of course for me, every weather is swimming weather. I practiced making tiny grains of ice with each hand, and crunched into the results to test their texture. The ones that passed the test got doused in syrup and eaten. I dumped the rejects into the pool, where they vanished without a trace. I'm thinking I need to spend a lot more time in the pool, especially since we have a hedge right next to it where I can hide large chunks of ice. The ferns are already full of hail balls, and my mom wonders why they're looking kind of wilted. Oops. I water them as often as I can to get rid of the evidence. My mother sees this as a budding interest in gardening.
My tongue is so purple right now. For the record, the ultimate sno-cone is soft and powdery on the inside, with a crisp (but thin) shell. It's really hard to compensate for the syrup and the sun, but I am a consummate professional, and diligently practiced until I got it right.

Status Report: Eating Ice Cream

Cryogenesis-created ice cream is perfect. It's exactly soft enough to scoop out with ease, with a slightly crisp surface, and it never melts. I went very slowly, so I could gauge the appropriate solidity instead of creating some freezerburn monstrosity. Not even I want to eat freezerburn.
I'm getting good at freezing specific objects. That seems to be my strong point. I can generate baseball sized lumps of hail (and I could go larger, except they wouldn't fit into the tiny cooler under my bed, and would be harder to dispose of properly), and I can cool something in my hand very easily, but I still can't figure out how to make snowdrifts properly. All I'm getting is a floor slick with ice, and my bruises still hurt, so I'm wary of walking on it. I should either buy ice skates or rent myself out to an ice skating rink. On that note, I need to find myself some secret headquarters where I can practice this crap properly, because I really don't want my bedroom turning into a fetid swamp. I'm neat enough that the floor is free of debris and my laundry hampers can be moved away from my practice area, but the room is far from spacious, and I have bookshelves that need more protection than a plastic sheet. Also, I think I need better dehumidifiers or more outlets, because my room is a little ... humid. Humid is a better word than choking wet miasma. I'm running my space heater pretty much constantly to keep my family from noticing the haunted house chill in my room, but my sister still whines that my air conditioning vents work better than hers.

Winter Wonderland: Tools of the Trade

Since I live in Florida, I don't have access to a lot of anti-ice devices. Screwdrivers and hairdryers really aren't cutting it for me, as yesterday's events demonstrated. My ankle hurts from where I scraped it. It's not infected or anything, but it throbs whenever I walk. I can't exactly tell my parents that I've stabbed myself with a screwdriver, so I don't even get sympathy points from them. Of course, I'm totally lazy, so the not-walking thing is well within my normal range of activity.
I've been researching ice management online. The options so far are salt, antifreeze, and windshield scrapers. I'm not going to go for something disgustingly expensive like those automatic thermal coils in Vector's suit. Unfortunately, odds are I can't physically buy anything but the salt. I don't believe there is a single auto shop in South Florida that sells ice scrapers, and I don't really own a car or have any interest in cars at all, so that might seem a tiny bit suspicious. In Florida, cars don't freeze. They spontaneously combust. And they spontaneously get melted by Firecracker during his collateral-heavy throwdowns with the local goons. One of the reasons I don't own a car is because the insurance down here is truly obscene.
Antifreeze doesn't sound particularly useful. The whole point of it is to prevent things from freezing, which is kind of counterintuitive seeing as I'm a cryogenetic and all. Plus, I don't particularly want to expose myself to too much of it. Salt seems like a better choice. It does melt ice a little bit, it's not going to kill me, it's easy to find, and nobody will ask questions if I buy a box or two of it. Plus I can totally make my own ice cream with it. I'm going to rescue that empty coffee can from the recycling bin and make ice cream tomorrow. I learned how to make it in chemistry class. I think it was supposed to be educational, since we did a token lab report afterwards, but mostly it was a bunch of kids kicking coffee cans full of ice around and eating ice cream.

Glass Slippers Give You Concussions

So, shoes made of ice rank pretty damn low on my list of brilliant ideas. I blame Cinderella. I've been back like a day, and I've already been dragooned into babysitting for one of the kids down the street. She's going through her ultra-femme Disney princess phase, except she's a total nerd about it. We spent some time arguing over what those "glass" slippers are actually made of. I voted Plexiglas, but the kid thinks they're made of that smart self-repairing polymer stuff that the Hamsternauts make their bubbles out of, because otherwise the shoes would be all sweaty and scuffed by the end of the evening, and hurt her feet besides. I cannot dispute that the shoes remained very sparkly, but they did shatter easily, despite having withstood an evening of dancing, going up and down stairs, and fleeing from royalty. Maybe they're programmed to self-destruct in the presence of evil stepmothers or something.
After the kid's parents got home (and paid me sweet, sweet cash) I went home and thought about glass slippers. And then I took a shower. And thought about glass slippers some more. They've got to be more practical than clunky Crocs, right? They'll be just my size, and I can repair them and change the shape of the treads, right? Nope. What I wound up doing was encasing my feet in impenetrable hooves of solid ice. It turns out, feet need to actually move when you walk. It took a while to chip off my ice clogs (should I invest in an ice pick? or is that a bad idea?) and I've got a painful scratch down my ankle from where the screwdriver slipped. And since I was standing in the shower with my slippery melting ice boots, I slipped and fell. I cracked my head against the wall on my way down, and I shot out an instinctive fluff of snow to cushion the fall. Except the snow wasn't quite snow, more like a sheet of ice, and it varnished every surface from the shower curtain to the wall, including the shower drain, faucet head, and emergency drain hole. There was another emergency cleanup procedure, involving my toothbrush cup, the sink, the hairdryer, the screwdriver, an ungodly amount of hot water, lots of towels, some parental deception and a scrub brush.
Once I had disposed of the evidence, put two band-aids on my ankle and dressed in dry clothes, I spent half an hour curled up on my bed waiting for the painkillers to kick in for my bruised skull, butt, elbow and ego. I suck. I suck so much. What the hell kind of superhuman almost kills herself with her own damned powers?

Getting People Killed

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Some dumbass in Miami, spooked by Coral Snake's absence, got hold of a ray gun and started doing the kind of vigilante crap that gets people killed. Putting aside the fact that ray guns are in no way covered under the concealed carry permit, that is some seriously stupid shit. Contrary to the laws of action movies and comic books, it is rarely a good idea to pull a weapon and stop any kind of armed robbery. Not only do you escalate the situation and possibly provoke the robber into shooting people, but you also run the risk of getting shot by the police when they arrive at the scene of a violent crime and see you waving a weapon. And even in the best case scenario, you still have one more weapon in the hands of a nervous, trigger-happy person than you did before you pulled the gun. Mr. Wild-West-wannabe didn't get any innocent bystanders killed, thankfully, but there was a confrontation. The perpetrator is dead and the vigilante is in critical condition. All for a few hundred bucks in some crappy fast food joint till. Great job, dude.
Now just imagine how the scene could have played out if the vigilante was a superhuman instead of just a moron with a fancy gun. You start off with a basic hostage situation, and then the guy holding the gun notices someone doing something- a shiver of force field, a twinkle of electricity, whatever. Do you think the armed robber is going to spend a minute rationally assessing your threat level, running you through the list of known superhumans? No. He's going to shoot you in the face. And then he's going to start shooting random people that he thinks are looking at him funny, because they might have superpowers too. Even if you happen to be bulletproof, it's dollars to donuts that most of the other people in the room aren't.
That's one of the big reasons I've been so slow to pursue the superhero angle. I can't stop bullets. I can think of a million cool things to do with my powers, none of which would be any use at all against a gun unless I had a five minute head start. And any display of powers at all is an open invitation to get shot in a violent situation. You can't tell by looking at me that I have superpowers, or what kind of superpowers I have, or how strong they are, or whether I'm willing to use them with lethal force. Some random mugger is not going to know who I am. For all he knows, I'm the next Killer Frost, and if he doesn't put a bullet in me he's going to die, fast. And that even holds true for the other end of the spectrum. Not only is assault with superpowers a felony, but it's often a death sentence at the hands of cops who've seen one too many harmless-looking supervillain take out a city block.

Winter Wonderland: Liquid Nitrogen

In honor of Wednesdays, I encourage you all to head over to YouTube and look up liquid nitrogen, and all the things one can smash dramatically after immersion in it. Bananas seem to be a popular target, but you gotta go with pumpkins for tradition. This clip shows a pretty good variety of things getting dipped in nitrogen: grapes, a rose, eggs, a ping pong ball and a balloon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE-BtbV6zA8

Most of the experiments I've seen with balloons tend to involve watching them shrink when they're dipped in nitrogen. This one had a balloon self-inflate after being filled with liquid nitrogen.
Now, I know you're all desperate to know: did I immediately go out and purchase large quantities of fruit to freeze and smash to brittle crystaline chunks with my awe-inspiring cryogenetic powers? That would be completely awesome, but the answer is no. One, no way can I get to those kinds of temperatures yet. Nitrogen freezes at -210 °C, or −346 °F, but is more commonly measured in degrees Kelvin. Yeah, no way am I there yet. Two, I'm still leery about leaving evidence around. Despite those murder mystery icicle-dagger-in-the-sauna stories, ice is really hard to melt in large quantities. It took me FOREVER to get rid of the ice fist I made around my hand, even alternating boiling hot water and a screwdriver to chip it off. It was fun to punch things with my indestructable fist for all of fifteen minutes, and then I realized that my hand was completely useless for doing anything else. Like, say, zipping my jacket. Opening doors. Typing. Scratching my nose. Picking things up. Walking around inconspicuously. I had been punching things in the privacy of a scrubby little patch of woods behind my dorm, but then I had to sneak back in with my fist wrapped in my jacket to defrost it in private, and also compete with Dani for the bathroom. I seriously need to set up some sort of secret headquarters where I don't have to worry about damaging the carpeting, or sneaking around, or having to scramble for a way to defrost myself and the immediate surroundings.

Slushing the Bed

My cold has graduated to a soul-sucking Kleenex-depleting Darwinian superpredator abomination. Maybe it is the piggy pox after all. It got bad last night. My teeth literally started chattering because I was shaking so hard, even buried under the blankets without an inch of exposed flesh. I had always thought that was a cartoonish exaggeration, but it turns out people really do that. I was considering posting last night to scrape up a little sympathy from the internet, or at least distract myself, but the computer was all the way across the room. Then I iced the bed. Not on purpose. It started off as a cold sweat, but more than humanly possible, and then it crystallized into ice. It wasn't a fever dream or anything, because I'm perfectly lucid (except for the part about the walls throbbing just barely out of sync with my heartbeat). It took me forever to break loose, slide out of bed, and I kind of wrapped myself in the towel and dozed on the floor instead of really drying myself off. I eventually dragged a dry-ish fuzzy blanket out of the laundry hamper (hot chocolate casualty) and camped out on the couch all night. I woke up covered with Dani's quilt.
I think that was the worst of it, because I can mostly stand on my own today. But really, screw class. Today I worked on damage control. I spent half an hour dragging my sheets and blanket to the laundry room down the hall, and I had to stick them through the dryer three times before all the ice was gone. I am officially out of quarters. Dani helped me make the bed, flipping the mattress over, no questions asked. I couldn't come up with a plausible excuse for the wet patch, short of confessing that I wet the bed, and even I have limits as to how far I'll go to protect my secrets. I'm back in my toasty-warm bed, with the computer, water bottle, and even a bowl of canned chicken soup that Dani bought for me and microwaved. And saltine crackers. I think Dani feels guilty for making me sick.
Now that I've written down all the easy parts, I have to actually think about the hard stuff. I'm terrified that I'm losing control of my powers. Has my time run out? Was there a use-by date on my powers? I haven't slipped up again, but every time I try to just drop the temperature a little bit, I get so dizzy I can't stand. So I've stopped trying. I don't want this to be over before it's begun.

Superpowers I Don't Have

Well, I definitely don't have the ability to create a crackling green lightshow. I tried, just in case I was overlooking the most obvious explanation for the incident a couple nights ago. I'm not sure how to describe using superpowers. For me, it's kind of like rolling my tongue. I kind of take it for granted. I'm not sure exactly what muscles are in my tongue, or what exactly I have to flex to make it work, and I definitely can't offer instructions beyond 'roll your tongue' to people who don't know how, but all I know is that when I intend to roll my tongue, I can do it. It doesn't take any particular teeth-gritting comic-book-style mental strain to generate ice. It's a very distinct feeling, and it takes some effort to do exactly what I intend to, but it doesn't damage me when I'm pushing at the boundaries of what I can do. My powers aren't an outside force, or a limited supply of energy, any more than my arm muscles are. Focusing on how I want to use my cryogenesis is like trying to aim a tennis ball at the appropriate part of the court- it's a matter of aim, control and effort, and I'm much better at cryogenesis than I am at tennis. Sometimes I slip, and wind up frosting my entire carpet, for example, but I think that's more due to clumsiness than anything else. And I really hope that evaporates soon, or I'll have to use the hairdryer on the wet patch. Again. And I'm going to have to take a shower to explain why I'm using the hairdryer at all, and maybe grow longer hair to account for how long I have to use the damn hairdryer, and actually use the hairdryer on my hair occasionally, and ... it just snowballs into a big secret identity problem. I seriously just need to get some tarp or something to put down before I start trying to make snowmen.
I wish I had telekinesis. Sometimes when I'm sitting down and I want a water bottle or pencil across the room, I'll yell 'telekinesis!' and reach my arms towards it while concentrating really hard. I figure, even if I don't have any mentally activated powers, it can't hurt to check occasionally. Also, I'm lazy as hell. Maybe one of these days the water bottle will come flying towards me of its own accord. As it is, Dani usually grabs the item in question and tosses it at my head. I suppose that's some form of success. Maybe it's mind control.
I've also been testing whether I can walk through walls. This has gained me a reputation as a klutz on campus, but really it is deliberate. Most of the time. I'm a bit more cautious when testing for flight capabilities, but so far I haven't found any.
It's not that I'm unhappy with what I can do, and am shopping for a newer, cooler set of powers. I'm not exposing myself to mutagens or secret serums or whatever. I'm just trying to figure out my limits. After all, I didn't know I could actually produce ice when I first got my powers. I just thought I was going to be 'Slightly-Cooler-Than-A-Normal-Person Girl'. I've already gone so far beyond what I thought was possible that it's not much of a stretch to assume I have more hidden potential. I suppose I'm fairly gullible these days, since I have a much more flexible definition of 'impossible' than I used to. I'm not saying that I believe in the weird conspiracy theories of secret societies of Elvis-stealing wizards with the power to grant immortality (seriously people, he's dead. Get over it) but considering that yetis have been accepted as a species since 1982, it's hard to be a skeptic sometimes.
And I have to admit, it would be awesome to fly. So I keep trying.

Who's Who in Boringville

Unsurprisingly, there aren't an awful lot of superpeople in our sleepy little college town. Grim avengers don't exactly have to work overtime to clean up the dirty streets of Coral Pines, and the weather is more often sunny than broodingly overcast. M'lar juveniles only graffiti-ed the golf course the one time, and nobody really cared about the crop circles in the grass except for the golfaholics. I think those circles are still there, and they qualify as a hazard or something.
We're not a big enough town to merit our own guardian hero, since not only is the crime rate pretty low, but the town is so small that it would be REALLY OBVIOUS who's spending their nights gallivanting around the rooftops with a grappling hook in hopes of catching a mugging-in-progress. Yet another reason why I don't do it. College gossip is a killer on a tiny campus like mine.
Of course, there are a couple I-wanna-live-a-normal-life superpeople (I guess I kinda count at the moment, since I'm still under the radar). There's that stay-at-home dad who lives in the apartment block across the street. I think at least one of his kids is bulletproof too, but nobody really wants to find out the hard way. There was one guy who graduated the year before I got here who could make energy flares. He wasn't allowed to live on campus, though. This was before the Hadley-White Act. I guess he was popular enough, but he was always 'the guy with superpowers.' I'm not going to tell anybody what I can do. It's not that I'm worried about getting hate-crimed. Its just that I don't know if I'll want to turn pro, and I don't want everyone in the world to connect my real name with my powers just yet. Call me vain, but I'd prefer to have my act together before I out myself as a super. I'd rather get "OMG that mysterious masked avenger was our classmate all along!" than "did you hear? That girl from my lit class thinks she's a superhero." Also, I don't want people bugging me to cool their drinks.
As for the rest of the superhumans around here, FIR-Tech is just a rat's nest of supervillains-in-training, and I'm certain they've got at least one classical elementalist on the faculty, but the only out super at our school is Dr. Zhang. Nobody's ever given her grief for it, but I guess it helps that she had tenure before her powers manifested. The students either love her or hate her. I've never taken her classes, but I hear she levitates textbooks and slams them down hard on the desks of sleeping students. It helps keep the freshies in line. I suppose she'd get different reactions if she could read minds or something. I know I wouldn't admit to being a telepath - you can't get a job anywhere (except in certain shady government agencies). And even if you are allowed to teach or attend public school, the neural inhibitors you have to wear pretty much ruin any chance of a social life. Seriously, could they make those things any uglier? Why don't they just issue tinfoil hats already?
It's been a long time since 9th grade civics class, so I don't remember which amendment it was that guarantees the right to mental privacy. On one hand, I'm glad that nobody's reading my mind without my permission. I want to be judged on my actions and words, not the stuff I'm too polite to say out loud. On the other hand, imagine how many criminals would be brought to justice if telepathic evidence were considered evidence in court. But then again, I would hate for that to be my job, poking through the thoughts of felons. No wonder so many telepaths burn out. I've actually seen a series written from the perspective of a telepath; Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse murder mysteries. Granted, it's an alternate-world thing without any superhumans, yet full of vampires who seem to have plenty of superpowers. But it deals with the ethical problems and daily life of a B-class telepath pretty realistically.