Unpopping Victor Mancha.
((Done with permission. Vic will over time remember the concept of Hogwarts and kinda what goes on there, but probably not too much else. Generic disclaimer: there's bound to be various Runaways spoilers as I play him.))Coming out of the darkness, Victor's face felt wet. He reached up and rubbed at it with the heels of his hands, dimly wondering
( Read more... )
Comments 52
Hey! Yet another unpopee. It was the order of the day, around Hogwarts. Stephanie had long since taken to carrying a well-stocked supply of moist towelettes in her backpack for just such an occasion.
"Hiya," she said, not remotely phased by the light show. She was ready to jump away in case of wayward sparkage, but Stephanie had seen much weirder things than a butter-covered meta human. Anyway, he seemed to have it under control. "You need a towel?"
Reply
"Hey," he responded, glancing up from his hands to look at Stephanie. "That'd be nice." In a rare display of self-consciousness, he smoothed down his hair (ugh, greasy with butter), which had been doing a pretty good impression of an angry porcupine.
Reply
"No problem." She unwrapped one of the towelettes, said a spell, flicked her wand, and ta~daa! A white, fluffy bath towel. Who knew parlor tricks could be so useful.
She held the towel out to Victor, giving the guy a cursory once-over. Yup. "Looks like you were foodstuffs, my friend."
Reply
Victor stared in astonishment at the magic being worked, and so effortlessly. Nevermind that he got to see kickass magic all the time, courtesy of Nico, it was still cool. Girl must be a witch of some kind.
"Wow. Thank you," he said, reaching for but hesitating to take the transformed towel. Thin, bright threads of electricity crawled up his arms, then dispersed again. He accepted the towel once he was certain no accidental electrocution would happen. "Is this common around here? I think it's put me off butter for the rest of my life."
Reply
Jaime hadn't intended to go anywhere near the Popcorn Room, really. He didn't even realize his route had taken him near it. But when you were constantly aware of electricity like it was a smell, certain things warranted investigation.
He was walking by and had no intention of stopping - and whoa, sudden electrical discharge, hello, sinus headache. "Nngh." Jaime turned and blinked in surprise at the source, a guy about his own age. "Dude. You okay?"
Reply
The reaction happened before Victor even saw Jaime, undeliberate and uncontrollable-strands of electricity surged around his body and gathered in spheres around his hands, trailing up his arms and outward in angry, jagged tendrils that briefly illuminated the room and quite nearly levitated Victor.
"Mierde!" He did his best not to panic, trying to determine what the malfunction was and get it taken care of. There was some kind of field surrounding the castle, so fine he could barely detect it, and it was affecting him strangely. The other boy's presence had seemed almost to... amplify it in some way? As Victor regained control of himself, the electricity quickly abated.
"Geez, something here really doesn't like me... Um, sorry about that," he said, genuinely embarrassed as he smoothed down his hair and looked Jaime over to make sure he wasn't injured. "You didn't get ( ... )
Reply
Jaime stumbled away from the light show, grimacing in spite of himself. Whoa. Way more than a sinus headache. The guy was making his teeth itch. The Scarab stirred, agitated. "Back off," Jaime hissed at it. Not again. He did not want a repeat of the Livewire incident. Despite the interference, he actually bothered to listen to what it was picking up just to be sure. ...Okay, not like Livewire, but it was no wonder the guy was having issues. Ouch.
He blinked, rubbing the bridge of his nose as Victor got control again and the "smell" abated. "You didn't do that, did you?" he whispered.
"No, I'm good," he answered. "Seriously, are you okay? What was that?" Ignoring the voice that was complaining that it had already told him that and he needed to pay attention, of course.
Reply
As occupied as Victor was with trying to keep the electricity suppressed, he didn't notice Jaime talking to himself.
"Me? I'm fine. That... happens, sometimes." He wasn't comfortable with lying, but had learned from experience that the truth could be extremely harmful, both to himself and others. Well, an 'abridged' truth was still the truth, wasn't it? And besides, it was a little too late to deny what the kid had seen with his own eyes without seeming even more suspicious.
"But not usually like that. I can manipulate magnetic fields." To demonstrate, he held out his hands and produced a spark, considerably smaller than before, which jumped between them and fizzled out. "I think there's some kind of interference here though, and it's making things loco."
Reply
Caprica had been by the popcorn room precisely once before, to see if the rumors of an entire room filled with students who had somehow been changed into kernels was true. It had been, and it had been unsettling--too much like being boxed for her comfort. She didn't make a habit of going inside after that. But the sudden appearance of a person, covered in butter and sparking of all things, was enough to draw her curiosity. "Hello?"
Reply
"Er, hi there," he said, hoping he didn't resemble that proverbial deer caught in headlights too much as he turned to look at Caprica. It was downright embarrassing to lose control of himself like that, and with an audience, no less... At least his electromagnetic abilities were calming down, thank God (which he did, silently).
Reply
She had never seen a post-popcorn student before, and couldn't help from taking a closer look. "You were popcorn, weren't you? What was it like?" She held out a hand tentatively, as if making sure that he was really there.
Gaius was suddenly beside her, sipping at a martini and giving her a sardonic look. "A little young for you, isn't he?"She ignored him as she ignored all but the most hurtful comments that he made and continued to question the boy. "What was that light? Was that part of the process?" It made sense, really. ( ... )
Reply
Now he was getting a little nervous. Not because a beautiful woman seemed to want to get all tactile with him (or so he told himself), but because- because she'd witnessed that unintentional display of his powers. He knew from experience that adults who found out about him could only mean trouble.
"That would explain the butter, I guess," he said, glancing from Caprica's hand to her face. "I don't remember much. I was somewhere else, then it was dark, maybe for a few seconds, maybe longer... and then I was here, soaked with butter and salt."
In response to her question about the light, he shrugged. "Could've been." He disliked lying, but it wasn't exactly a lie, right? As though it were a physical manifestation of his guilt, a thread of electricity abruptly spiraled around one of ( ... )
Reply
Reply
Victor stepped a little closer, uncertainly. He was keeping his distance mainly due to his electromagnetic powers being unpredictable.
Reply
"It's me," she replied. "What happened to your powers? You think it's the butter?"
Reply
"My powers?... Oh. Yeah, maybe. I don't know," he said, absently glancing down at his butter-soaked clothes. Ick. But his current buttery state hardly concerned him.
Curiosity got the best of him, and he closed the distance between them and cautiously reached out a hand to touch Gert's arm, almost reverently. "You're... really here."
Reply
Leave a comment