Midnight Manor Boarding House All-Purpose Room, Tuesday Afternoon

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

At the Halloween party, Arden had asked Remy if he would be willing to help her learn a bit more about her powers. And had then spent the next week or so ducking and hiding from him about it because she'd gotten cold feet (Frigid feet. Zero degrees Kelvin feet.) about it the same kind she'd gotten when she and Cal had worked on meditating up on the roof before. Only, sorry Remy, she didn't think she'd be able to press her hand against your chest to have help calming down.

But, eventually, she'd managed to shove the fear down enough (or, okay, shame herself into it enough, same basic difference) to reach out to Remy and set a definitive date for when they were going to practice. And here she was, complete with the promised barbeque that was was holding in a white-knuckled grip. But it was okay. She was gonna be cool. Chilly. Totally unfazed.

Confident.

...Eventually?

[For the gentleman so named, but available to anyone else in Midnight if they want to check out what's happening! That Remy and Arden are practicing is fine, but details about powers, etc is NFB, please!]

Comments

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Callista owned a bar; Arden knew very well that you appealed to the ego of drunks, rather than trying to tell them what they could or couldn't do.

"Let's go," Arden said. They headed up to the rooftop, and she went to look over the edges of the nightclub to see what they were dealing with. And as she did, she sent a breeze around the building to get a sense of what was present that she couldn't see.

[knightinshinarmor]

Remy followed, his coat billowing a little as he went. He noted the bits of detritus around the building blowing gently and nodded to himself.

She could sense the shapes of things with her wind. That was a very useful trick!

"So. What've you found?"

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"The main force of zombies is approaching the front door," Arden said, her eyes closed and brow furrowed. The worst part about this - it required a lot of concentration to interpret the data the air currents were offering her. "Looks like...ten or twelve maybe? Hard to tell when they're all clustered in a group like that. But there are three in the back and one that's either...a drunk guy, a body, or a zombie that hasn't gotten up yet lying towards the side, I can't really tell."

[knightinshinarmor]

Remy nodded. That fit well with the scenario he'd given Midnight.

"Alright. Looks like your friend downstairs is doing pretty well keeping folks contained. What do you want to tackle first?"

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Probably the ones around the back," Arden said, thinking it slowly through. "We didn't do anything to stop the back door, and somebody might come out to just, like, bring trash to the dumpster or whatever. And once people see the group at the front door, they'll probably run out back. Get rid of the stragglers, then attack the main force."

[knightinshinarmor]

Remy grinned. "Was thinking that, myself." He hopped up onto the edge of the roof. "I'll meet you down there."

And he stepped off the edge.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"W-what?" Arden sputtered. "You're going down there? We're going down there?"

She was just talking to empty air.

"Are you crazy?!" she yelled over the edge of the rooftop.

The smartest thing to do would be to go back inside and just go back down the way they'd come. But this was supposed to be learning to use her powers, so...

"Air blocks," she muttered. "I can make...like a little staircase...?" Stepping onto the edge, she firmed the air directly next to it and took a tentative step onto it. Okay! Good! It held! Now to make another one, a little lower than the first.

This was gonna take, well...it wasn't gonna be fast, at least.

[knightinshinarmor]

Remy had landed lightly on his feet (sorry, Arden, rooftops were basically home for him, and getting down from them, if they were two stories or less, was mostly an excuse for acrobatics). He looked up and tilted his head.

"Can you make your blocks move?" he asked. "You could float yourself down instead of working on making more."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"I--don't know?" Arden said. "I never have."

Well, that wasn't true exactly. She'd hit nega-Cal with a block of air once, but that had been more like a slap from a distance than trying to move something up and down that she was standing on.

"Is the middle of a zombie sim really the best time to see if I can?"

[knightinshinarmor]

Remy shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not."

The zombies had noticed him and were headed his way. He didn't even glance back at them.

"Up to you, petite!"

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Remy!" Arden hissed. "Remy, you can't stop to chitchat in the middle of a zombie sim!"

She was just going to keep slowly working on her staircase. It was slow, but it was something she knew she how to do. And also, she could just stop where she wanted to. Like if she didn't want to get all the way to the ground where the zombies were she could just make, like, a little air landing here and stay put on it. You know, up where the zombies couldn't get her.

[knightinshinarmor]

“Can’t I?” Remy asked. One of the zombies was nearly upon him. “You sure ‘bout that?”

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"You're gonna get eaten by a zombie, Remy!" Arden said, waving her hand to frantically try to put another block of air between Remy and the zombie. "I don't know if watching you get munched on by a zombie is really gonna motivate me to use my powers more! Trauma is actually a terrible teacher!"

[knightinshinarmor]

Remy extended his bo staff and swung it in the same movement, snapping it back at the zombie approaching him without looking -- and hitting her block of air.

"Seems like you got it handled."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Because I don't want you to die, even for pretend!" Arden sputtered. The block itself wasn't very wide, torso-width at most, which meant that already the zombie's scrabbling arms were able to reach out and try to grab for Remy.

[knightinshinarmor]

“Ah.” Gambit grimaced faintly, and almost casually swung his staff again, smashing the zombie in the head over the block, then around to take out its legs. “That won’t happen. Gambit plays, but he’s not actually going to let anyone get him.”

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"...Oh," Arden said quietly, watching the casual ease with which he dispatched the zombie behind him. "I...yeah, okay that's fair."

Right. He was a superhero, too. Of course he'd be fine.

[knightinshinarmor]

“Midnight’s watching out for us, too,” Remy noted. “You’re safe in here, petite. We both are.”

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"I mean, I know we can't actually get hurt," Arden said, still keeping an eye on the other zombies. "But I don't know how far or realistic the sim is up to that point? And I really don't want either of us to get dragged away or Game Over'd or whatever."

The other two were still shambling forward. Arden racked her head trying to figure out what else she could do besides just throw more bricks of air at them. This was supposed to be helping her get an idea of what she could do, right?

This time, instead of just making a wall of air, thought about Kamala's giant hands and tried to make one of those out of air to just swat a zombie away.

Turns out, bitchslapping a zombie with a giant hand was pretty effective! It didn't kill them, probably didn't hurt them, but it did knock them down because their balance wasn't particularly great. By this point, her eyes were glowing gold and the scent of spring rain and lightning filled the air.

[knightinshinarmor]

Remy couldn’t help but grin at that. The sight — and smell — reminded him of Storm when they first met, when she’d been deaged and had lost her memories of even how to control her abilities.

When she’d lifted an entire jet to get them away from the Shadow King’s hounds.

“Beautiful!” he called to her. “Now you’re getting it!”

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"But this isn't really a long-term solution!" Arden cried, knocking another zombie down by slamming some hardened air into the back of its knees. "Down isn't the same as out!"

[knightinshinarmor]

"True," Remy allowed with a bob of his head. "But! You're thinking creatively now. You can make big, blunt shapes with the wind. What about small, fast ones?"

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Like....frisbees?" Arden, who was clearly not a Lunar Soldier fan, asked dubiously. "Or, like...rocks? Rocks that can't miss?"

Concentrating made the ozone scent stronger as she focused on trying to make something like rocks. She pulled on a chord of magic, listening to how it reverberated in her head. If she pulled on this one to make a brick, perhaps pulling on that one would give her another shape? She sat down cross-legged on her floating platform, frowning as she slowly fumbled her way towards solidifying fist-sized chunks of air and then frowning further as she tried to whip them at the zombies at speeds faster than she could simply throw.

"This is really hard!" she called to him. "I swear I'm trying to be as fast as I can!"

[knightinshinarmor]

“You’re doing something new,” Remy reminded her. “That’s almost always really hard. Keep trying a little longer, oui?”

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Arden wasn't sure how to explain that she hadn't been giving up, she'd been apologizing, in case he was getting impatient with how long she was taking.

"Okay!" she called back instead. "I'm gonna figure this out!"

Though she was getting more tired. Not that kind of drained tired that she usually got, but more of that fuzzy-headed tired, like she'd been cramming for a major test for hours.

She was going to ignore that, though. At least until she got these stupid air rocks to throw right. It was the speed that was, ironically enough, slowing her down. She pursed her lip and frowned, determined to make this work. It was her power, dammit. It should do what she wanted!