Name: Constance (Connie) Sutherland
Code name: Flying Fox
Ratings: flying, strength, PK (contact?), radiation shielding? levels uncertain
Techniques: none
Weak vs.: [unknown]
Backup/ Team affiliation: family

The less said about most of the powers testing the better.

The written stuff was just boring. So were the card guessing things. The surprise attack bit (Xavier test, I think they called it) startled me, but I'm really glad I pretty much keep the skin field up all the time. That would have hurt if I hadn't been protected.

Then there was the dodgeball from hell. They wouldn't let me just stand there and let the balls bounce off. And I couldn't dodge all that well. But I finally figured the trick of bracing myself so I wouldn't move and batting them out of the way with my hands and arms.

***

"OK, let's see how much weight you can lift"

Connie bent over and picked up a large barbell. She lifted it easily, with no hint of strain.

"Got anything heavier?"

A short while later, after running out of free weights (they only went up to four tons) they had her working with a cross between a Nautilus machine and a mad scientist's idea of a heavy duty press.

They had her rest, and she couldn't lift the weights she'd just lifted. That surprised everyone, including her. But she was able to work back up to it.

The next time they had her rest, they were surprised again when she was able to easily lift a weight she'd strained to lift just before.

"What did you do differently?"

"I'm not sure. The first time I thought we were done, so I relaxed. This time I..." she paused searching for words, "it's hard to describe. It's like when I go down, I can sort of feel something building. Or when I've been pushing hard to fly. There's something like a pressure or a tingle or something. But it's different for when I float down and when I'm flying or lifting..."

"And this applies to what just happened how?"

"Oh, sorry I got distracted thinking about it. Anyway, this time since I knew there was more lifting coming I just let it? Made it? keep building."

More weight lifting ensued.

Connie had gotten what she called her "second wind" early on and now there were alarming creaks coming from the unit.

"Please stop, Flying Fox. We need to come up with a different way to test things to find your actual limit."

Another tech spoke up. "It looks like as long as you expect that you'll have to do more work you just keep getting stronger."

"No, it's more like her power just keeps building when she's using it or expecting to use it. But if she 'relaxes' it drops back to zero fairly quickly."

Connie looked thoughtful. "That might explain some stuff... So if I can just learn to keep my power up, I'll be stronger?"

"Could be. But until we do some more testing and get a handle on where your power is coming from, you should be careful. There might be side effects."

"Yeah, and there's something really weird about her power curve..." muttered someone.

"Well, we need to test your force field now. Apparently it stops x-rays?"

They started by trying to x-ray her hand. And wound up in the med labs with a completely underexposed patch that perfectly matched her hand.

Next they tried having her use the "bubble" form of the field. That was awkward. Finally they had her floating in midair in the classic superman flight pose with one arm stretched out in front.

The bubble was opaque to x-rays as well.

"Great. That means we can test more things without worrying so much about you, because we can just aim so stuff that makes it through the field will go past you."

It was quickly determined using a devise that could create coherent beams of various radiations that her bubble stopped everything from ultraviolet on up through high energy gamma rays. Completely.

"Where's it going? There's no scatter, it just hits the field and goes away!"

They tried upping the power. No effect.

Someone suggested that as long as they had thing set up, they might as well try going up in wavelength.

The first pass through the visible and IR bands showed new effects. The light went through as if the field wasn't there. The IR disappeared.

This prompted someone to dig out an IR camera. And discover that the field was blocking IR. When it was up, it was a black spot on the image. When it was down, the girl glowed in IR just like a normal human.

Then they tried cranking up the power on the laser. As expected, the field still absorbed the IR wavelengths. Then they hit the visible wavelengths.

Surprised yells from one of the techs drew everyone's attention. There was a bright spot on the sensor the beam was aimed at. It stayed there even as the beam power went up. But the spot stayed the same brightness. About as bright as sunlight someone figured.

That led to someone wondering about radio frequencies. About the time it occurred to someone to just hand the girl an RF meter and move in a transmitter, some else had thought to check the data Security had given them.

"Hey! She didn't show up on radar when she flew here!"

Connie blushed. "Um, yeah. I don't do that anymore. I had a really bad experience when I was younger. Almost got caught by somebody. I don't know what I did, but I quit showing up on radar after that."

Lots of questions.

"No, I don't know. I just sort of 'learned' or something. Just like when I got sunburned the first time I flew really high."

More questions. Most of which Connie answered with "I don't know."

They finally went for the more normal tests for force fields. Her field was very tough. But some of the readings were odd.