Anarion

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Oh no. A trading quest! Kathelia hated trading quests. They were sooooo boring. You had to play errand girl to everyone and their mother. First one place, then the other, then backtrack, then backtrack again, on and on and on. It felt too much like what her sisters wanted her to be doing. And beyond that it took forever and there wasn't any challenge or strategy to it! You just had to look everywhere, talk to everyone, and write it all down and eventually you'd figure out who to talk to for each thing you needed until you got your ultimate result, which was a bunch of stupid keys in this case.

Kathelia just put her head in her hands and leaned on Kyouko for support as she despaired at this.
[Look closely: 3+2=5. Miss. My question is "What will happen if I systematically talk to each merchant and ask about the keys for the door?" I find out the hard way. Also the curse advances.]

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

She really didn't expect Kyouko to react this way. Kathelia is blushing furiously! She's never been this purple in her life! Her glasses are so steamy that she can barely see, her long white hair is all tangled up, one of the bands on the pigtails seems to be coming loose and bits are tangled in Kyouko's fur and the fox puts both arms (pompoms and all) around Kathelia and hugs her tightly as she buries her in kisses. It's a special kind of heaven, one that she never thought was hers to have.

As the fireworks are going off and the pompoms are shaking very fast, Eska is busy trying to set up every crystal in the room to show that she will NOT be ignored. This, the analytical side of Kathelia is saying to herself, is a mistake. One crystal laser is annoying, and it takes power to deflect. It would eventually disrupt Kathelia and Kyouko. A couple at a time might even speed that up, make it more difficult to deflect, up the math requirement perhaps. But Eska isn't doing that. She's furious at being ignored. She could have just gone for the head start through the maze, but she has to have attention and so she's wound herself up and up and up until she's trying to show off by causing every laser and crystal formation in the room to bounce, refract, and focus on Kathelia and Kyouko in one fell swoop. And that's silly of her because trying to concentrate all that power means that if just one little thing goes wrong, it will blow up in her face.

[Finish with doom: 6+3+2=11]

It only takes that little bit of shifting. Kathelia watches the lasers coalesce out of the corner of her eye. Leans into Kyouko, buries her head in that soft, soft neck fur and nuzzles her, and as she's looking to the side, she waives a hand and the last crystal near Eska shifts out of alignment. All that laser energy comes together and oops, there's no focusing lens to send it at Kathelia and Kyouko! Eska might realize what's happening, but it's too much energy too late for her to get out of the way. Instead it has to release somewhere and that happens right where she is in a big glittery crystal laser explosion! Victory for the heroes!

Slowly, Kathelia and Kyouko extricate themselves from each other. They do need to breathe, and they are still trapped and cursed in a maze. They can't just sit here forever, much as they'd like to. It's been a few minutes though. The crystals are mostly exhausted and there's a hole blown in the wall. Kathelia finally does look over at Eska, who seems to be out for the count here, her clothing a slightly smoking swirl of rainbow patterns as the laser explosion impacted her.

"Well," she says, pulling her glasses down. "I'd thay the flaw in your plan wath crythtal...uh wait. Technically, a flaw ith the part of the crythtal that ithn't clear so...the flaw would be cloudy but...argh, no that'th no good! The crythal ith clear! Which meanth we can thee the flaw, stho I mean, your plan wath clearly bad! And it had lotth of flawth, which meanth it wathn't really clear at all! Your plan wath a...um...a cloudy crystal...er...I gueth?"

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Eska!!!!!

Never has Kathelia been more angry at her sister. Not the time she blew up an entire room of equipment in Kathelia's face. Not the time she covered Kathelia's saddle with an invisible glue that made it impossible to get off of her pegasus. Not even the time she trapped Kathelia and Cassian in a crushing wall room just to see how they'd act when literally forced into each other's arms.

She and Kyouko were HAVING. A. MOMENT.

Well, you know what, too bad. Too bad Eska. Kathelia wasn't the same sister she was before and she doesn't care one bit about crystal lasers right now. For once, sister, you can just sit there and be ignored because everyone else in the room is busy right now. Maybe she'll realize that other people are important for once and she doesn't need to be the center of attention all the time. What? A girl can hope.

Kathelia puts up a hand, just one. The other one is still around Kyouko, wrapped around her shoulders, nestled in the small of her back to hold her weight, pressing her uniform gently into her fur with the center of her palm. The crystal shimmers, the laser fires, and it parts around the raised hand. Kathelia's magic reflecting and refracting it. There's a rainbow. Eska might not be sure if it's from the crystal light refracting around that hand or if Kathelia is adding the effect to go with her general glittery hearts aesthetic.

[Overcome: 4+4+1=9. The effect is temporary, but that's good enough.]

Kathelia leans forward and uses the hand on Kyouko's back to pull her close. Her glasses are unsteady and her overalls too tight, but she doesn't care right now. She's acting on an instinct that's deeper than Eupheria's curse. She pulls Kyouko close, and she breathes, maybe even hyperventilates a little, but she takes in that autumn scent with its hints of cinnamon and lets herself dream for a moment. Then she gives her fox a kiss. It's a gentle kiss. A little tentative. She's not as experienced as Alina and Rita at this sort of thing. It's probably a little chilly too, she's still got that Rider void within her. She presses the very center of her lips to Kyouko's, so there's just the hint of a touch. Pulls her a little closer, lets the sensation spread out, just a bit further. She parts her lips ever so slightly, lets out a breath, feels the warmth and the cold mix and tingle and come back to her and just holds the moment.

She knows this is the last moment she gets out of this. The analytical side of her brain is already starting to whir, her inner voice calculating the angle that she could deflect the crystal beam (she did super great on her trig homework, just so you know), but she gets this moment and nobody, but NOBODY is going to take it away.

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

CREEP
WHIPPED
TRUANT

"That implies we had something" she says, her voice is steady, calm, hiding a restrained fury. "I thought we could have something, and you abused that trust and manipulated me when I tried to leave. But I brought you Timmy, and now your little trick has worn off. I already broke up with you, bastard, you just couldn't accept it the first time."

She has a hand up and she looks ready to cast a spell, as the other is pulling on Timmy to start moving and leave with her. Samael, you take even one step across that room, even one step towards her and she'll do it. No more being caught unawares.

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

CREEP
WHIPPED
TRUANT

Being a Witch isn't about fight or flight. There is magic that one can do in a panic, and all the range of emotions that one can feel when overwhelmed. But this is the thing you don't understand, Timmy. Being a witch, being a Baba of the Sockolov family, is about mastery of such things. Do you not know the old legends? Maybe you don't, you'd prefer not to know them, to pretend the world is all tea and crumpets, soft things and nothing waiting out there in the night, is that not so? But you are here, Timothy Oglevee Crompton. You are here, and it is time to learn something of that.

When you are afraid, you master that which you fear. A witch can't ride a broomstick, much less a cauldron unless she has the strength (and the thighs) to enforce her will upon it. Annalee isn't there yet, see how she shrank from Samael and served him at the first sign of violence? Her strength and her magic all crumpled and he played with her. That cannot be allowed to stand. What spirit of hearth would take her seriously, knowing that she might wilt at a mere slap? What old devil of cold winters and warm vodka would care for a witch that doesn't have the muscle to back up her magic?

"Timothy" she says, and it's probably the first time you've ever heard her use your full name. "Let's go. A vampire respects power, you are not a person to him. Even if he tells you utter truth in this moment, it means as little as the time it takes his whims to change. Face that now. Only power that can match his is worth anything at all, otherwise you're nothing but a plaything and he a savage."

[I am rolling to Shut Down Samael. 6+2+2+1(for invoking Savage)=11. Take the condition MERCURIAL]

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

This was, this was okay. It was exciting! Kathelia's glasses were steaming up again and her attention was all over the place, and keep it together, this is just like...like a bunch of other times in your life and... okay no she's not keeping it together. She has to...has to...ugh you know what, forget it! She grabs Kyouko in a hug because she is on top of her and she can't really see anything else anyway and...and her body is just working that way, just let her have this moment for one second, okay!

In a moment, Kazelia Swiftlance will start to think about a lot of things. About what to expect from Eska. How to escape the laser trap pit (which probably has an extremely neat pattern in its timing that she can figure out), and how to start thinking about this curse that Eupheria has cast and the metaphysical dimensions of the space they're in. Because she's getting really tired of running this maze and tired of being cursed while she's doing it, and Eupheria has left them alone, which means it is time to start thinking about how to cheat at a rigged game.

In a moment, she'll think about all of those things. She might dodge some lasers too, or spar with Eska, or tell Eska to get it together and partner up to await her sudden yet inevitable betrayal.

In a moment! Right now, she's hugging a fox cheerleader on top of her who's pressing down on the straps of her overalls in a way that makes it way too hard to think about anything else, so she's just going to enjoy that fuzzy fur and pressed uniform and the scent of Kyouko's body mixed with her perfume. Then! Then she'll think about things.

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

I'm looking for a Samael post here. If Elanorin wants to have him sit, then I think we can wrap up the scene. If she wants the confrontation now, I'm also game for that and will adjust my night plans accordingly either way.

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Kathelia vaguely remembered visiting a world where sports were really popular. It would be have several back now, more than five maybe? Oberon had taken a very personal hand in that one, he seemed to quite enjoy winning trophies, even if they were meaningless to him once he had them (except of course if anyone else tried to touch them, in which case his full wrath would be on display). But not to fall too deep into the sad memories, that world had held up its great athletes as its heroes and they had used magic to project the matches to huge crowds in stadiums, bazaars, marketplaces, and palaces.

Kathelia had um...(no no, in the memories she was still Kazelia, she could think of herself from back then without her internal voice articulating the lisp, mostly)...she had been enamored of one of the sports there, a kind of flying javelin toss fake combat thing called "Lighting Strike!" The participants wore winged shoes and used special golden energy rings to catch and hurl the javelins. If you hit another participant without them catching it, you'd score (and there'd be a big lightning effect on the person's uniform), and if you bypassed them all and hit their goal with a javelin, you'd get something like a ten times score accompanied by thunder and lighting while everyone reset positions.

What was coming back to her now, though, weren't really the games themselves though. It was the promotional material! Back there, the games had been promoted with all sorts of ridiculous claims on posters and by people announcing them around the marketplaces. "See Juniko, the Unstoppable Arrow!" "Watch Anika the Unbreakable crush her opposition!" "Live today it's Esmeralda Thunderbolt, she's promised to win the match without touching the ground even once!" It's those kind of claims that Kathelia is thinking about as she watches Alina vault around the arena.

Sure, she's there, she's trying to get the ball when it gets near her, but she's a little afraid of it too, she doesn't want her glasses to get damaged or for it to hit her in the face. Besides, the nearest it got was when Alina brushed by her with that smile and more than anything else, that made her blush and fangirl out a little. She wanted to shout "Voids, this is just like the time Esmeralda Thunderbolt recovered from being poisoned by the coach of her arch-rival team, the Avalanches, and then she made a show out of personally taking down each player with a javelin catch reversal at close range before taking it in for a score!" (yes, she wanted to shout all of that, she could speak very quickly despite the lisp). There wasn't time though because Alina was already gone and one of the hoops had been stilled with the most delicate back flip double somersault dunk (around Eska!) Kathelia had ever seen! She was in awe and she was almost certainly going to ask Alina for an autograph after this if circumstances permitted it. Squeee!

[My grace roll was a 6, by the by]

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Oh dear, the loser tent had a lot less cake, and a lot more awkward mockery of curses that Eupheria herself had put down. Kathelia bet that Dandy was actually a really good dancer and could even make that odd sunflower dance look nice if she didn't also look at a horse. This was just mean.

"Say Sally sells seashells by the sea shore without making a mistake.” Oh, well, that was easy.

"Thally thellth theashellths by the thea sthore"

EEEEEENNNNZZZZ Eupheria blares a loud air horn that echos out across the stage. "Incorrect. Please try again, and this time, do try and enunciate!"

"Sthally s-s-s-thellsssth s-s-theashellths by the sssthea shhhore"

BBBBBBBZZZZZZZT this time a loud buzzer goes off blaring from everywhere on the stage at once, making Kathelia wince. "Incorrect! No stuttering please!"

"S...Sthally s-ell-s s...ea..sh...ells"

BRRRRRRTT Eupheria blows one of those party noisemaker things, which extends out into a mimicry of a snake but still makes the raspberry sound instead of hissing. "Too slow, you'll just have to do better."

Suffice to say that over several more attempts, Kathelia does not do better. Her braces and her teeth and tongue just aren't working right at the moment, and the curse won't let her overcome that (and sure she could blow some magic on trying to hold back the curse, but seriously, it's not worth that kind of firepower right now). So instead, she just gets purpler and purpler, and eventually she's up there hyperventilating and just not able to do it.

"Well, nice try sweetie pie. Better luck next time!" And at that point a giant cane comes out of nowhere and pulls Kathelia off the stage.

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

CREEP
WHIPPED
TRUANT

And there goes Elodie. Timothy, being useless as ever (well, not entirely true, Elodie clearly cared, but he wasn't moving which was the critical action right now). Annalee has already edged nearer to him and away from Samael. A lot is racing through her head. The way he treated her, used her. The way he made her look like his tool, embarrassed her. She wasn't his to use that way. She wasn't any man's to use that way and her Baba had taught her better than that. It was mortifying, and worse it was a failure on her part. Well, no more.

Annalee grabs Timothy by the hand, not so much as a word, and pulls him out of the room. Samael had forced her to bring him, but he hadn't said a word about keeping him and she'd had plenty of time to adjust her bracelets and charms, so just let him try that foolish hypnosis of his again.

She stops at the door though and looks at Samael. It's a look that says I know what you did. Is he going to get his butt out of his chair for once and do anything about this? She highly doubts it.