tushanshu_logs | OPEN | Tonight the foxes hunt the hounds

Entry tags:

OPEN | Tonight the foxes hunt the hounds

Characters: Zatanna & Open
Date: Early September
Location: Mu-Hao to start, though mostly just around Keelai
Situation: Revenge is a dish best served cold; as such, Zatanna enlists her favorite partner in crime to get back at Wan before making a run for it. In the meantime, catching up with some of the current Turtle population.

Warnings/Rating: None

She wasn't entirely sure when a single challenge had turned into an all-out prank war, but she was pretty sure it had something to do with Wan using his then-secret nature of technically-Korra-even-though-not-actually-Korra to get past her room Wards. Rude.

It was perfect. He had snuck into her room, so she would simply keep him out of his. For a little while, anyway. Jack had been all too eager to help her, because of course he was. Setup took minutes. They only had to wait until he was long gone for the morning. A thick block of ice covering his door, and a second blocking the window. He was, in essence, frozen out of his room until the ice melted.

From there, she quickly decided a clean escape while she had the chance was best. She would return to the scene of the crime later, for sure, but in the meantime, she was suddenly up for a nice, long stroll around the city.

And if someone just so happened to catch her in yet another fit of laughter, well...depending upon who it was, she might be up for explaining over a milkshake. Preferably chocolate. With extra whipped cream.

She'd earned it, after all.

((ooc: general mingle for anybody who wants to run into a giddy Zee pretty much anywhere around the city. Just specify in any starter threads and I'll roll with things~))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jack was wearing sort of a stupid grin as he slid into the seat across from Zatanna. "You realize that between the two of us, there's enough magic in that ice to make it last from now til Christmas?"

It was a stupid grin, but it suited him.

(...wait, that came out wrong.)

For Zatanna's part, she couldn't help beaming over at Jack from across the table. The order for shakes had already been placed, but she was still hyped enough from residual adrenaline that the added sugar probably wouldn't make much difference.

"We'll let him back in before then." She idly reached for his hand, fingers brushing over the palm in a playful manner. "Maybe."

(She likes the stupid grin.)

"Maybe," Jack echoed. "I'm still amazed that he got past your wards at all. Do you know exactly how he did it?"

After all, Jack normally had free pass into her portion of the suite but Zatanna had shown him before just how strong they actually were by temporarily revoking that access. Even trying to move through the walls -- an ability Jack had admittedly been lax on practicing the last few months -- had repelled him just as strongly.

The spirit smiled as she touched his hand; it was cool to the touch again, with the summer heat having broken. He'd been getting better at not becoming flustered by the random bits of affection (not just in public, but everywhere). "You gonna read my palm now, Madame Zatanna?"

(A little.)

"i do, actually." She blew some of the hair from her face in a melodramatic puff, using her currently unoccupied hand to prop her chin up. Given how freely the pair had spoken about it, she was fairly certainly it wasn't any major secret. But it was still a bit tricky to explain. "How much do you know about his connection to Korra?"

Partially because if there was any degree of information he already knew, it would save her the time of explaining. It also gave her a momentary reprieve to better collect her thoughts, as she returned her attention to his palm. It was cooler now; she was fairly certain she wouldn't be able to hold his hand any longer than a few seconds before the sting of his extremely low body temperature took its toll.

Good.

"Absolutely. Maybe we should start with your life line."

She had no idea how to read palms herself, but of course she'd picked up a few key phrases over the years from her days traveling the circuits.

"You mean besides being from the same world?" Jack asked, surprised. He and Korra had hardly spoken recently, and with the fishing shop still out of commission, their paths had little reason to cross. He missed hanging out with her, but he didn't want to push.

"Lifeline, huh? You might need my whole arm for that."

That answered that question.

"Aside from being from the same world. Is yours, by any chance, familiar with the concept of reincarnation?"

As she spoke, her finger continued its "analysis" of Jack's hand. Trailing back and forth and, when he joked about needing the whole arm, slowly upwards and over his wrist.

"Hmm. I see what you mean. This might take me a while."

"Uhh... just the usual, I guess? You die and then you get reborn again in... another form, or something, in the future? Or the past? Like those people who talk about being Cleopatra in their past lives..."

He gave a halfhearted shrug, because dying and being reborn as someone else was a weird thing to be talking about in abstract given... himself.

"Take your time, I've got nowhere I'd rather be..."

Well, it's not like I'm in any hurry to get back home, either.

She made it to his arm, though it was covered by the sleeve of his hoodie, and back down again. A passing thought occurred to her, and she wondered just how much of this Jack could feel. Obviously, he had a sense of touch. But how sensitive? Did it feel the same to him as it did to her?

His palm shouldn't have mesmerized her so, but she couldn't help her curiosity. It was completely relevant to her interests, after all.

"That's basically it. Minus the Cleopatra bit. Wan is Korra. Or, at least, a past life of hers."

Which was how he got passed the Ward. It had allowed access to Korra, and Wan had taken full advantage of that loophole to sneak himself in.

Jack had to stop for a moment to try and wrap his brain around Wan and Korra being the same person. He'd have asked Wan how that worked, but he was fairly certain his roommate believed Jack was angry with him over something, possibly their first meeting.

"So the wards though he was Korra," he puzzled out, flexing his fingers a little as her light touch tickled. He didn't get goosebumps, but he definitely felt the sensation.

"And that smug jerk knew he could use that loophole the entire time I was challenging him."

She didn't seem all that angry. Or annoyed. Not anymore.

His fingers seemed to twitch a little. Grinning, she curled all of hers except for one back, and poked him right in the center of his palm.

"I figured it must have been something like that to get you wanting a full out prank," Jack chuckled; he didn't voice that the last time she'd really seemed interested in such practical jokes was when Dick had still been on the turtle. He watched her poke his hand and grinned.

"Looking for the off switch, are you?"

"I'm honestly amazed you agreed without asking for the whole story."

Relating her renewed interested in pranks to Dick hadn't really crossed her mind. She still thought about him, of course. Constantly. She even missed him, and if anyone asked, she'd be the first to admit it. But practical jokes...sure, they had been one of his many Things, but the original prank wars had actually been instigated by Bart and Tim. Sort of.

At least, that's how she chose to remember it.

"I'm pretty positive you don't come with an off switch." She grinned back. Poking him again just because. "Does it feel any different? When I do that, I mean."

Verses when other people touch you. Verses when you were still alive.

"Guess that speaks to either how much I trust you or how desperate I am for a good prank," the spirit teased. "I'll leave it to you to decide which one."

He leaned his chin in his free palm while he watched her poking his hand. "I notice you don't say you've never looked for one. And... I don't know, different how?"

"Both."

She didn't even have to think about it. When presented with two such options, the answer was always both.

"I don't know. Different, like..." One last poke, and she switched to drawing little circles instead. "Different from someone not wearing a charm, I guess."

"Not surprised," he laughed.

He hummed a little, thinking about her question. "Well, you don't feel as warm as someone else's hand would," he answered. "But you don't feel cold either, it's kind of neutral? Like room temperature feels to everyone else, I guess. But it's not just the temperature, there's something... I don't know. It kind of resonates a little bit."

"Does it hurt? Tickle?"

The more she talked about it, the more genuinely interested she was. Her father used to explain the magic side of how the enchantments worked. Sometimes, they would experiment together. On the safe ones. Not unlike the one she wore now. But it was different when working with someone who didn't share their family magic bloodline.

"Kind of like..." He thought for a moment, trying to find a like comparison. "Like holding onto something with a really fast hum."

"Like a hummingbird?"

It was the first comparison that came to mind. The imagine of Jack holding a little tiny hummingbird....

"So like Baby Tooth, if she were still flying while you were holding her."

...wasn't much of a stretch.

He bobbed his head. "That's as good a comparison as any," he agreed. "So when we're touching, it feels like that... starting wherever we're in contact but then spreading. It's a little weird but... nice."

She smiled, bypassing the game altogether so that she could fully take his hand into hers. What he was describing...it wasn't quite the same on her end. There was no humming sensation. The part about it starting where they touched before spreading, though? Yeah, she could relate.

"Do you think it's the magic? Or is it just us?"

"I'm not sure there's that much difference," Jack replied and though it sounded like a quip, in many ways it wasn't. Magic was literally in their lifebloods... was it even possible to separate them like that?

Her own train of thought was following something vaguely similar. She was a being born of magic. He was a being reborn from magic. It flowed through their veins (albeit slightly more fluidly in hers). Every second of every day...excluding those awful times when magic had been either restricted or nullified completely. She tried not to think about those times too much.

"I wonder what it's like for other people." She purposely didn't bring up Dick, and the difference between whenever they made physical contact, and now. It would ruin the moment. "People who don't have magic. What this feels like for them. If it's different."

He tried not to think about those times too much either, and was merely grateful that whenever it had happened, he hadn't simply dropped dead in the street. Definitely, not going to bring that up.

"We could always go around touching people to find out."

Jack, that sounded so wrong out of context.

"What, like an invisible game of poke wars?"

"Maybe we should make a bet out of it," he elaborated with a wicked gleam in his eye. "Best reaction out of five wins?"

OPEN | Tonight the foxes hunt the hounds

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