<div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/SD4m7CZ.png?1)<br/>Stonewall | Jackson Stewart (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=298984.msg14626760#msg14626760)</div>Raising her eyebrows in surprise, the redhead looks thoroughly impressed and curious at Hope's brief description of her powers-- "<i>Pretty much the main thing you do</i>, eh?  Well, surviving that kind of thing is remarkable, and coming to the ground on your feet, in one piece and looking like--yeah-- that's all... radiating... a buffer field?"  The woman studies Hope, her mind whirring through possibilities, and as such she hangs onto her hand as if examining it.  "That's grand... simply grand..."  she lifts Hope's fingers toward her face a bit, openly studying the young woman's cuticles and skin tone.  "Do you get any tingling or pain when you do that, then?  Any particular sensations like nausea, or any changes in your visio-- Oh, goodness, I'm terribly sorry.  I'm just... frightfully curious."  She releases Hope's hand then, embarrassed, affected perhaps a little more by just how flustered the sudden realization of her forwardness is making her.<br/><br/>"So then... Yes!  I'm Jackson.  You can call me Jax if you'd like.  No terribly interesting story there I'm afraid.  But this place turned up on some records I was searching, and I found the climate and location suitable for some testing I was hoping to do."  Turning away, she walks with a definite sway back to her table of gear and unscrews the top of a stainless steel water bottle, lifting it and offering it over to Hope with a polite smile.  "There isn't a dearth of unused airfields back home, and it seemed at the time that the desert climate and access to American military bases would be conducive to further contracts."<br/><br/>She gives a slight shrug across the packed, baked earth, where Hope's keen sight can pick out countless sets of her tracks, from day-in and day-out treks across the desert soil, that would be invisible to the naked eye.  "And this is a... er... kind of tough to explain device.  It uses a simple helium-photon-generator and a miniature quantum accelerator to amplify their intensity like a centrifugal gun? Then the photons are simply hyper-focused through a channel of regulating chambers and lenses... so you can just use some precalculations and amplify the beam for a desired result."  Sometimes, her mind's ability to multi-task betrays her... and now's one of those times, she realizes with a brief start, as one part of her delivers the technical summary with chipper ease, while another is vividly imagining what it might be like if Hope were able to lift her up like the heroine in that silly Super-Hero movie that came out before the Emergency and fly her around... still another part of her mind is wondering just how in the world that leotard manages to stay put with her 'protection' field and if there's anything under it.  She quickly closes the door on those wandering thoughts just in time to contain an involuntary squirm.<br/><br/>She returns to her focus on the device in her armored hand.  Grinning proudly, Jax gestures to the roof, where her wide-angled beam on the sheet metal is no longer searing hot and has, instead, settled into a pockmarked black smudge.  "Wide-angle,"  and then to a cinder-block downrange with a few smooth, black holes through and through, "focused, and..." she shrugs, "... haven't tested this yet, but.... burst."  She winks.  A clap echoes off the device in her hand, without recoil, and there's a simultaneous crumbling of masonry down the range as the block disintegrates into powdery remnants and chips of fragmented, searing-hot masonry.  With a grin like a flirtatious schoolgirl, she locks onto Hope's eyes.  "Pretty boss, eh?  This tech stuff can be fun."<br/><br/>A puff of mesa dust from the exploded block wafts over her, then, engulfing her face like a slow-rolling fog.<i>So much for impressing her,</i>she thinks.  with a light cough, she piteously tries to hide the effect of the dust.  "But messy.  Sorry, didn't expect that."  With a slight laugh, she shrugs and points back over the hill again.  "Um, like I was saying, my shop's back over there.  As beautiful as the desert is, it's going to get a bit hot out here.  You want to take that lunch inside?  I've got some things for lunch there.  And you strike me as good company."  With a glance over her shoulder, her eyes flit flirtatiously over the younger woman, a glint of mischief barely restrained.  She immediately blinks and turns her gaze away, as if restraining the impulse to be so forward, or desperate.  Still, she finds the prospect difficult.  "I've... got more neat tech stuff?  And more to drink than water," she says with a shrug and an inviting lift of one eyebrow.