afraid_of_marshmallows | Midnight Manor Boarding House All-Purpose Room, Tuesday Afternoon

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Midnight Manor Boarding House All-Purpose Room, Tuesday Afternoon

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!]

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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!"

"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.

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

"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!"

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."

"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.

“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.”

"...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.

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

"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.

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!”

Edited 2024-11-18 03:46 (UTC)

"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!"

"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?"

"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!"

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

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!

“Atta girl,” Remy said softly. He watched her and the zombies both, spinning his staff idly.

Storm was an omega, a mutant without an upper limit to her power. He had no idea if whatever Arden was could compare to that. But he also knew how powerful “a little wind” could be. Arden was focused in on making blocks of air right now, and he was happy to work with that. But Bobby was also an omega, one who’d held himself back for ages with denial. And Remy wasn’t about to let Arden do that if he could help it.

Dammit, Remy, stop reading her canon.

"You're wind!" Arden told her stupid air-rock, aggravated. "You should just go fast. Just be wind, dammit!"

The stupid chunk of air in her hand ignored her, laying there, recalcitrant, in her palm.

The rest of the air inside her answered however. A literal gale burst from her, blowing the two zombies over and pushing them down the street, along with a cyclone made up of all the street garbage and detritus from behind the club.

And still it kept coming, more and more power spilling out of her, the wind moving faster and growing stronger with every beat of her heart.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!" Arden yelped, the words practically torn from her mouth. "Okay, uhh...stop! You can stop being the wind now! Thank you! Sorry! So just...stop? Now?!? Please?!!!"

Maybe your canon should be less relatable to Remy’s canon, Arden!

“Breathe, petite!” he shouted over the wind. “Stop fighting it and let it happen! Your body will know what to do if you let it!”

"Are you sure?" Arden asked, definitely sounding like she was doing more panicking than breathing. The wind kicked up another couple of notches, forming an actual funnel cloud right now. "I don't know that it does, Remy! It's never listened to what it was supposed to do before!"

“I know breathing air never made anything worse,” Remy said brightly. “What’s it hurt to try in here?”

"I am breathing!" Arden yelled to be heard over the roar of the wind. "But the wind ain't stopping!"

Come on, come on, come on you stupid, HVAC system with delusions of grandeur, just CUT IT OUT already!

Weird how being bitter and angry at her powers wasn't having a positive effect.

It’s almost like they’d talked about this already.

“Good! Now let go!”

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Midnight Manor Boarding House All-Purpose Room, Tuesday Afternoon

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