It was the first play of the final quarter, and the scores were distressingly close to each other. The Littletown Raptors were facing off against their main rivals for the regional finals, and they were only ahead by 6 points. Gregory Harkness was expected to make a big difference in this game, as he was one of the fastest wide receivers their team had ever had. He had just caught the pass from his quarterback, and was halfway to a touchdown, but had two defenders coming in from either side.
As they were about to get to him, and were halfway through their dive to tackle Greg, he jumped as hard as he could, trying to get over their tackle attempt, something he had practiced many times with his coach, but immediately he knew he hadn't jumped high enough, and could only tuck his legs up and go into a forward spin to try and keep out of the defenders' tackle. Amazingly, when they collided, he got launched upwards way higher than should have been possible.
As he landed, he did his best to turn his downward momentum forwards, tucking his legs, and purposely swinging forwards, and once again, he was launched with far more force than seemed likely, jumping forward nearly thirty yards in one leap. With two more steadying leaps taking him another fifteen yards, he sprinted across the end zone a few seconds later, and stumbled to a stop, with adrenaline and exhaustion fighting for control over his body.
The kicker purposely flubbed the followup play, and launched the ball in Greg's direction, which he caught for a 2 point conversion. As he stood on the sidelines watching the defense team stall until someone could intercept or the fourth down was over, the adrenaline was clearly winning, and he bounced on his feet a little to stay ready. As soon as it was his turn to take the field again, he nearly rocketed forwards to join the offensive line.
The pass was thrown, his teammate threw him a lateral, and he took off down the field. This time he was pinned in by three defenders, and when the tackle was completed, the whole pile seemed to bounce off the ground almost immediately upon reaching it. This didn't prevent his knee from touching the grass, but it was rather odd, and everyone was looking at each other warily trying to figure out what was going on.
They reset their formations, preparing a special play with the other wide receiver switching spots with the tight end, and once again, the ball made its way into Greg's hands. To prevent another tackle, two of his teammates were right behind him, and when the defenders dove at him, one of his teammates shoved him hard, just as he jumped. Once again, he went flying far higher and farther than made logical sense, and upon landing, was launched once more, nearly failing to control his flight through the air.
One rough landing later, he was sprinting into the end zone, and had made another touch down, and as the kick flew into the air, the buzzer sounded the end of the game. The kick was good, and they won the regional championship. Greg was both drained and too full of adrenaline to stay still, and joined his team in celebration.
That night, when he flopped onto his bed, exhaustion finally taking over, he bounced nearly three feet up before he settled. While he was rather confused by what happened, he also didn't care enough to stay awake thinking about it, and fell asleep quickly. The next week went without incident, but during football practice the Monday after, he once again bounced further than he should have, this time nearly tripling the distance he should have traveled.
When he finally landed and came to a stop, he stomach sank, he knew what had to be going on, and powered people were banned from playing sports with normal people. He turned to his coach, and saw the same resignation mirrored on his face too. It was time to be sent to the councilor's office. A few meetings later, his school schedule was rearranged, and his school life and path as an athlete was forever altered.
It wasn't all doom and gloom, as suddenly gaining mad hops was fun, but learning to control when and where it happened, as well as preventing it from happening when he didn't want it to were rather tedious. On his way home later that week, Greg was practicing getting extra air on his jumps for the fun of it, and jumped over a light pole, only to run into and bounce off of the roof of a nearby building that was overhanging the streets. As he was already in his bouncy mode, or whatever it was, this launched him backwards to before the building began, and sent him bouncing off of random junk on the street for another few yards.
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Getting to his feet and brushing himself off, Greg was glad that bouncing off of things didn't seem to cause him any bruising, as he would have had quite a few after than particular pinball-esque experience. He finished going home, being careful when and where he did any further practice, and was able to make it without any further accidents.
But when he opened his backpack, he discovered the true cost of pretending to be a pinball – while he was immune to the effects of bouncing off of everything, his backpack and its contents weren't. And as he took stock of the damage, his pencils were all basically toast, and a pen had ruptured all over the inside of his backpack. His parents helped him get a padded backpack, and some more pencils, but Greg decided not to keep any pens in his backpack or pockets for now.
The next week during power practice, he was testing various applications of his power, and body checking large objects for the fun of it, when he bounced off of a particularly heavy item, and into one of the other students. While Greg was completely safe bouncing around, other people weren't, and once he saw her soaring through the air, he launched himself into a dive to save his classmate. Fortunately, he got under her in time to save her from any damage. Unfortunately, landing on him again sent them both flying again, and he had to scramble to salvage the situation.
After a series of slightly more absorbent collisions, they finally came to a stop, and were able to check the damage. While she was quite red in obvious embarrassment from flying all over the room, his classmate was fine, and thanked him for helping, after which she flew off to another part of the room. Her powers let her fly, apparently, which meant that all of his scrambling, might not have been needed at all. More embarrassed than he had been earlier, he went back to his own power training, and tried to forget the while thing.
While he was weight training the next day, his hand slipped and he dropped a fully weighted down squats bar on his foot. Instinctively, he yanked his foot out from under it, which only made it bounce harder, as his foot was unharmed, but the bar he was using, with the whole two hundred pounds of weights on it went flying back at his face, bouncing off and flying at the weight rack and knocking several other weights free in quite the most dangerous display he had seen in the gym so far.
After he finished helping everyone put the weights back where they belong, he finally admitted to himself that he needed to go to one of the more expensive, but superpower specialized gyms. His powers weren't anything he had thought of as being particularly dangerous, but he was forced to agree that they weren't particularly safe either. So he packed up his things, showered, and went back home, not looking forward to the conversation he needed to have with his parents.
As he was making his way from one class to another during school later that week, he was knocked into by a rather angry looking somewhat heavyset fellow student, which sent both of them flying through the crowd like bowling balls. While Greg was getting used to getting back into control of careening through unexpected collisions, the other guy clearly wasn't and judging by how everyone else was acting, was used to being avoided.
It was rather surprising that anyone would still take the risk of being a bully when the scrawny nerd you're about to punch could randomly exhibit superpowers, but some people just couldn't handle their home life without acting out elsewhere even now. So when the would be bully pulled himself back to his feet, and saw that Greg had already gotten back up and was walking towards him, he let out a snarling growl and charged right at him.
Greg was not slacking off on his football drills and exercising, so he easily dodged the charge and sent the guy off to the side. It was an instinctual reaction, from having spent years playing football, but that wasn't going to make the wannabe bully any calmer. As soon as he was deflected, he turned around and swung a fist at Greg's face, so he just activated his powers, braced himself, and let it land.
The bully ended up punching himself in the face, as he watched his fist rebound off of Greg and launch itself straight back at his own face. By now Greg had determined things weren't going to deescalate, so he just sent himself flying away with a tackle at a nearby tree, and got out of there the fast way. But not before saying “Alrighty, see you later then.”
This, unsurprisingly, did not help calm the bully down, but he was now quite wary of what random people around him might do in response, and marched off in an angry huff. The rumor of what happened grew in the retelling and Greg was soon quite glad that he had his mandatory councilor's meeting right after that, as he was forced to document everything his powers did, and how it felt and all that stuff during those meetings until he was in full control of his powers.
A few days later, as he was going from class to class once again, he tripped and upon landing found himself flying upwards from having bounced off of the ground. He had been working on having that be an instinctive response to such situations, but wasn't expecting to go flying quite so high when it did finally happen. And how high did he go flying? Well, his school had two story buildings, and he gently landed on the roof of the one he was walking past just after reaching the peak of his flight.
It wasn't long after that that Greg finally fully grasped how to use his powers, and snafus became few and far between, and far more public, as he had joined a national sports league of super powered athletes. His exploits are now public record, and the government keeps a detailed record of his achievements. But Greg doesn't care, because the new sports being invented to be played by those with super-human capabilities are fun, and mean that he didn't have to give up his dream of being a professional athlete.