sheep_game | btwn us and the weeds we make one entire incineroar

[brb.]

[...She hurls the handcuffs out into the rose bushes as far as she can, with what is a frankly unnecessary amount of violence, in a belated flash of quiet but world-scorching rage.]

Edited 2024-04-28 01:33 (UTC)

That's more like it. Here's your free stage.
Show us some fire. I know you have rage.

[the rage simmers down just as quick as it appeared, mellowing into some kind of low-key resignation and futility. The flower on her head has at no point stopped being dead throughout all of this.]

[She wanders over to the water's edge and holds her hand over it, testing the heat. Is this too hot to go in now? damn.]

Eh. What's the point? "There but for the grace of the Emperor go I," right? We weren't that different.

[

now he wants to make her mad on purpose but he doesn't have any immediately good ideas for how to do so. which is the whole point, he's pretty sure. damn. what a tough chestnut. grudging respect. ]

In mien, surely. But in circumstance, not.
You lived, she didn't, now not even rot.
A difference, within, you shan't clearly define...
But I see it. I know it. A reason, to find.

_{[ technically, they could keep bonding. he's still trapped in rhyme, and she's got the Very Dead Flower.

if he can't lure out anger, there IS something different he oft sees shining in her, now and then.

he mimics her pose likes he's testing the temperature, but just flat out skims his fingertips on the surface. feels what his out of control magic had bled into it, raw and masterless... ]}

...It's still live mana. The temperature is yet in flux.
I think one could shape it, though we needn't must.

Edited 2024-04-28 02:06 (UTC)

[resignation. sadness. and yet, still, the desire to learn.]

...Show me how?

_{[ sits up straight. proffers both palms to the air, to either side of himself.

a little whorl of water pulls up from Rose's default pond, and gathers together in a sphere over his hand. the same thing happens, drawing from the hot spring. ]}

Examine, touch, feel, taste if one's brave,
Tell me what's different, between each wave.

_{[ spoilers: the pond water is perfectly... whatever normal is for Sheep setting pond water. the hot spring's, she can feel the trapped bit of mana coursing around in it like a restless animal in a cage, causing random sways in the temperature (with a preference for HOT). ]}

Edited 2024-04-28 02:22 (UTC)

[She cups her hands around one, and then the other, concentrating hard and trying to suss out the difference.]

[Idk if angie can sense HER mana, but ever since he gave her that crystal, she has never once been at 100% again. She has been practicing daily, often multiple times per day, going through the drills on her own, so they'll start feeling more natural.]

[Her hands linger around the spring water and her brows knit.]

I can feel it moving around.

[...She doesn't know what she's supposed to do next, but she tries to will it to come to her, trying to control it with intent alone.]

[ AZDAJA RECIEVES:

mana, invisible to naked eye, clumping up on her palm from within the water as readily as if she'd coaxed it to do so from inside her own body--

and then a feeling of growing heat where it's at its most dense ]

[...heck. she doesn't know what to do now. The instructions only covered breaking it off, not how to turn the broken-off mana into something usable.]

[She thinks cold thoughts in it's direction. Cold. Be colder. Her brows knit in concentration. mmMMMMMMMM]

[she might need further instruction but she is definitely making an attempt to puzzle this out, at least.]

Do you know why the bulk of my dolls turn to use fire, first?
Flames are ire, hunger, and thirst;
Heat grabs and takes, and feeds off all life,
And e'er it passes, sows discord, and strife.

[ that's fucking great angie but she isn't trying to make it MORE hot ]

A simple chill, though, is a more difficult ask,
Beautiful ice, so brittle, and fast--

_{[ applying WILL and COMMAND to it, now that she's successfully captured it to manipulate, definitely does something. it starts to erratically struggle at the confines of her control under the pressure. It keeps jabbing every which way as she tries to shape it to be...

Cold.
...cold water should contract, but it keeps wanting to fill a bigger space. All at once, it slips her control, but follows her direction for "cold"--

Namely, the ball flash-freezes solid, riddled with spikes where the mana was trying to jump her control.

Then it falls. ]}

[ abandons his rhyming to giggle when it becomes a lil pile of crushed ice in front of her feet ]

[JESUS christ, that startled her. oh my god.]

[She scrapes the pieces into the spring.]

...Well, that's a start...

[She holds her hands over the water itself, this time, trying to seek out more rogue mana. Honestly, the fact that enough mana left his body to accidentally boil the whole spring is, frankly, terrifying. How does he have this much mana to spare. How does he have this much mana to spare on top of everything he's been spewing out left and right since not just THIS game but the LAST game? What the fuck. Horrifying to think about how this is a perpetually nerfed version of him. No wonder he tried to destroy the world -- that was something fully within his power. christ almighty what the hell]

[she's trying very hard to cool the pond but he will still feel the constant stream of "awe" and "aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh" through the bond.]

[ observing. very interested, in what her mind turns to try. how her own nerves interplay with magic that was already colored by, agitated with emotion.

if she tries the whole thing with gathering bits of it directly to her to tell BE COLD more, she'll create random chunks of ice, usually no bigger than a handspan or two, floating in the water... that rapidly next away.

technically, that method WILL do steady chip damage to the circulating mass of magic still in there . . . but there's got to be a more efficient way, right?]

Edited 2024-04-28 03:38 (UTC)

You're feeding its chaos,
With so much held within.

Why don't you try... a touch more loose?
Let it weaken, and thin.

Force is a trap. Though similar to feel,
These aren't your own veins, and won't completely heel.

Edited 2024-04-28 03:52 (UTC)

[She frowns, considering his words.]

[She takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. Shuts her eyes. Tries not to think about shutting her eyes and being distracted when Angie is Right There. Tries to relax so she can better feel what she's doing.]

[She tries to imagine energy creeping through the pool like a winter draft through a gap through a cracked window. Slow. Spreading. Calming. Slowing. Constricting. Tries to coax it into a lower state of existence.]

[

...
as she tries to relax, angel devil gives a very
light
touch
with Rose's emotion power,
to help her along. whisper-soft, a like a leaf unfurling; the same careful dosing he'd been giving himself, to get through having his magic ever on the knife-edge of being a wild tempest. usable only so long as he's still in enough control. calm. not serenity. not peace. calm. clarity. a cool, canny feeling.

under her fingers, the pool cools. the wild mana grows faint, like it's losing its grip on life, heat, restlessness. what remains sinks to the bottom... heavy, out of her reach, merely simmering like an ash-covered coal instead of raging. the danger of it, banked and smothered away to simmer in time to nothing.

...the steam billowing from the spring dwindles. tolerable. maybe even balmy, if you're particularly cold and in need.

it's not become a cold spring, but just a few minutes ago, that was at boiling point. and, maybe, if she set free some of her own mana in some water, later--

this... seems like something she could definitely repeat? the trick of it is probably keeping the mana from immediately rushing to dissipate, once she cuts it off from its source. the stuff in the spring had held shape, until she hushed it to rest. ]

Edited 2024-04-28 04:30 (UTC)

[When she no longer feels the searing steam, she cautiously dips a hand in to test the water. It's surprisingly tolerable. She's tolerably surprised.]

Oh... Did you do that?

[--But it's a reserved, doubtful kind of surprise, like there's a catch somewhere, she knows it. She just hasn't figured out where yet.]

[ idly playing with the floating ball of pond water he still had without ever touching it. ]

Of what, exactly, do you accuse?
I need specifics, before I can lodge my excuse.

[oh, okay, he definitely did something. Makes sense. He's trying to TRICK HER into thinking she could do this. She gets it now. She may be trying hard to learn, but she can still be paranoid about it the whole time. AZDAJA HAS TWO HANDS.]

Never mind.

...Thanks.

Hm, hm~.

[ he gently pushes on the sphere of pond water... and like a balloon with half the helium gone, it lazily bobs toward her.

Explains nothing of what he expects her to do about it. ]

[she reaches up to try to catch it with mana, braced and fully expecting it to just explode in her face.]

[ it stays, perfectly still, just where it's been caught. The surface does have a bit of rippling, but that's what was already there resolving away. ]

Edited (Typo,,,) 2024-04-28 05:39 (UTC)

btwn us and the weeds we make one entire incineroar

no subject

no subject

no subject

1/2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

1/2

2/3

3/3

1/2

no subject

1/2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

1/2

(no subject)