(Untitled)

[scarlet_discord]

Who: Wanda, various friends, open
What: Curse + Hex Powers + Poor Control + Upset Wanda = Trouble.
Where: the CES, moving to Zero after midnight
When: 2nd day of A Murder of Crows through the endgame
Warnings: Cursing, flaily dramatic Wanda, poltergeist activity that may result in minor injuries, creepy atmospheric stuff, even worse luck

Comments

Saturday Morning, Before Dawn

[scarlet_discord]

Wanda sat up suddenly in the unfamiliar dark and blinked in bleary confusion at the stars. Where was she? Oh...now she remembered. The CES, her self imposed exile away from where the curse could hijack her powers to hurt people. This was no friendly camping trip. This was an attempt to spare Wanda Zero, the very thought of which terrified her.

She shivered violently; it felt around thirty degrees outside her bedroll. Quickly she dragged her coat over and laid it atop the blankets, but the chill from the ground soaked up through the pad beneath her and left her stiff and miserable. Finally she gave up and rose to try and feed the campfire embers back to life with tinder. She did not notice in her exhaustion that the flames she coaxed up were oddly blue.

Saturday Morning, Before Dawn

[darknessb4me]

The cold would only get worse.

There was an oddly human scream and a rabbit tore across Wanda's clearing like the hounds of hell were after it. The flutter of night birds and crickets seemed to list in the same direction, getting further and further away until the night was strangely silent.

Then the ambience was ruined entirely by sound of someone tripping flat on their face, and a dismayed curse.

Saturday Morning, Before Dawn

[scarlet_discord]

Wanda looked up from the flickering blue flames, her expression growing from worried to mildly terrified. She only knew two people remotely that spooky and there was only a chance that it was one of them.

"H-hello?"

Crap, what are you doing, that's the sort of thing coeds say right before the axe murderer shows up!

Then her visitor went over with a substantial thud. The voice might have sounded familiar. Dismay turning to worry, she picked her way toward the sound's source.

"You okay?" Her foot hooked on a root and she stumbled against a treetrunk. "Crap!"

Saturday Morning, Before Dawn

[darknessb4me]

"I'm... fine. I didn't think there was - " Bushes rustled, and there was a second thump. "Light-dammit."

It was impossible to be spooky when one kept tripping, it really was. What was the world coming to?

A moment later, a slightly ragged-looking Arthas with a scrape across his cheek and a borrowed tank top weaved out of the trees.

"Easy. The ground has a mind of its own today."

Saturday After Breakfast

[scarlet_discord]

It was difficult to meditate with the noises of the woods around her. Her luck had gone completely to crap in here and it had affected more than her. Branches breaking and falling on her. Tony's nose and the loss of his spell components. A small rockslide as they were hiking out that had left her bruised--and rattled from nearly going over a crumbling cliff's edge. Nearly wandering into a narrow canyon full of rattlesnakes. It just went on. So now she was incredibly jumpy at every creak, crack and rustle, and cringed her battered shoulders if it happened overhead.

She was so focused on her efforts that she missed when the rustling sounds grew more regular and became footsteps.

Re: Saturday After Breakfast

[restoringhonor]

Zuko was actually pretty used to the concept of everything being against him, so apart from the fact that the ship was apparently going to go down if it wasn't stopped, he wasn't all that panicked. It was frustrating, sure, and he hated sitting around waiting to see how things played out, and collecting bruises and scrapes wasn't fun either, but he was coping. He'd been through more difficult things than this.

Wanting to do something more than just sitting around waiting for something to happen, he'd headed up to the CES to see how Wanda was doing. Apart from being a little battered, he was more or less unharmed, and after looking around for the other teenager for a while, he was pretty sure he'd found where she was camping out.

"Hey, Wanda? It's Zuko. I... thought maybe you could use some company."

Saturday After Breakfast

[scarlet_discord]

She opened her eyes, looked up, and smiled a little, calling over. "Over here in the clear spot. Watch that giant sequoia, it likes to drop big pinecones."

Her hands were knotted together even as she stood up to greet him. She had been trying not to move them much. "It's risky. I keep having incidents. Usually I just end up covered in pine needles or bitten by bugs, but...maybe you should sit across the clearing." A trembly, rueful smile.

"It's good to see you." She was one of those people who could look him in the face without either looking away or staring overlong at the scar, apparently.

Re: Saturday After Breakfast

[restoringhonor]

He immediately suspiciously glanced up at the tree, and sure enough, he found himself sidestepping a large pinecone, staring at for a moment before heading over to the clearing.

While he was pretty confident that he'll be able to defend himself if her powers got out of control, he still nodded and stood on the opposite side of the clearing. If she thought something could happen, it was better to be safe than sorry.

"You too." He was used to people staring, or trying not to stare, and generally it was after weeks that people stopped doing it, so the immediate not calling attention to it either way was appreciated. "How are you doing?"

Saturday Afternoon

[scarlet_discord]

Wanda was really shaky now, even with the efforts of her friends. She could feel...something inside her...building up, see the vortex above her getting stronger. Fear washed over her in waves, and each time she looked hastily around to catch any flashes of blue light. Warning signs, like the pressure inside of her. And between the fear she felt the resentment of Sveta growing again, as it had grown with each scare, each bruise, each time her powers had slipped loose and sent things flying around her, or breaking, or bursting. Her cheeks burned under the wetness of goddamned tears she couldn't get to stop leaking out. Her nose was so stuffy that she didn't catch the rank animal smell of something large approaching through the forest until she heard the crash of brush just a short lunge behind her.

Re: Saturday Afternoon

[notiaraincluded]

Luke has been all over the place thanks to this whole curse thing making everyone turn into a walking disaster waiting to happen. Since he hadn't had much in the way of contact with her, perhaps that was why he hadn't been effected. At least not in any way he'd noticed. In all that commotion, he'd almost forgotten about Wanda and the fact that her powers were very similar to Sveta's.

Having made his way into the CES, he began calling out looking for her. Damn, he wished Wolverine was here.

"Wandaaa!"

Saturday Afternoon: T-O-A-D....

[scarlet_discord]

Big guy: big voice. She heard him, and her own thin voice rose above the trees. "Here! I'm over here...." her voice broke a little.

Then she smelled it and heard the noises. Scrambling up, she turned to look around. That swampy smell...why was it vaguely familiar?

There was a horrible, wet snapping sound, and suddenly something grayish-pink and thick as her waist lashed out of the bushes and darted toward her. She threw herself to the side and the sticky length wrapped around the tree she had been leaning against. "Oh CRAP!"

Re: Saturday Afternoon: T-O-A-D....

[notiaraincluded]

Hearing her call out to him in response, Luke moved quickly between the trees towards where he heard her voice. He also heard the distant sound of limps snapping and her sudden cry and he started moving faster.

"Wanda! You alright?"

Saturday Evening

[scarlet_discord]

Wanda was soaked. The torrential rain slammed down through the gaps in the trees and knocked needles and pinecones and sometimes whole branches loose from above. Lightning blinded her; thunder roared in her ears and left them ringing. She had hoped to wait out the squall, but there was no shelter, and finally in desperation she started picking her way down the path toward the CES door. But they had hiked out a long way to keep from disrupting anyone else who came in....

Re: Saturday Evening

[tadwizard]

Tony tromped through the rain beside her, thinking of the various things they'd run into. "Okay, maybe the CES wasn't such a good idea."

Saturday Evening

[scarlet_discord]

"I'm sorry, Tony. I should have gotten a little ovarian fortitude and just gone down to Zero. I'm just so scared of that place."

Re: Saturday Evening

[tadwizard]

"No, it's okay. I thought the CES sounded better too, remember?"

The Witching Hour

[scarlet_discord]

Wanda stumbled out of the door to the CES, bloodied, bruised and sobbing, coat lost, clothes torn, gear and food abandoned in the mad storm somewhere behind her. Once out of the Warden area she collapsed to her hands and her knees on the deck a few paces beyond the door, feeling the deck shudder and lurch slightly under her. "I hate her," she gasped. "I hate her. Oh Gods, I hate her.

"I have to go to Zero. I can't tell between her curse and my powers anymore. I have to go...."

[gingerspeedster]

That was when he found her. A lot of things delayed him checking on the people he knew, from waking up late to running into walls and getting lost. But when he found her on deck, he was in much better condition than she was.

"Wanda?" He rushed to her side, ready to pull her into his arms if he had to drag her to the infirmary.

"Wanda, what happened to you?"

[scarlet_discord]

She slowly dragged herself to her feet, wavering slightly. She felt like one big mass of bruises, scraped skin and adrenaline. "My powers have gone out of control. They're hexes...bad luck...so they mix badly with this...mess. The CES tried to kill us because of me." Dramatic Wanda is dramatic, but she really is that scared.

"The total power dampener in Zero. The place scares me, but it's a cure. I gotta go. I've already talked it over with a bunch of people and worked up my nerve. I gotta go. I don't want to make things worse. Tony knows where I'm trying to go. Please...please just get me there. Ok?"

[gingerspeedster]

If that was what she wanted, he was happy to oblige. He swept her off her feet to carry her down to the bottom of the barge, but paused first.

"Your powers. Are my chances better at super speed or normal speed?"