tushanshu_logs | [OPEN] Summer move forward and stitch me the fabric of fall

Entry tags:

[OPEN] Summer move forward and stitch me the fabric of fall

Characters: Pepper Potts, Yami no Bakura, Gene Khan, Tony Stark, and you!
Date: Throughout September
Location: All over de place
Situation: Pepper is learning how to fight, investigating things both nefarious and merely frustrating, and rebuilding some bridges
Warnings/Rating: Mention of explosions, trauma, and death/executions. Sparring. More details warnings will be added as needed.

A. Jade Dojo | Mid September | Closed to Bakura

As he promised, Bakura has been teaching Pepper how to fight with a staff. She's also learned that taking care of weapons isn't quite as glamorous as she might have thought. It's still a neat skill to learn, and it's also nice to have something to focus on that's so totally alien to her, and something that she probably would never get the chance to do back home. Whenever she arrives at the dojo, she never really knows what she's going to be doing that day. The Egyptian seems to like keeping her on her toes.

B. Sky Sector | Right after the Chihuelan executions | Closed to Tony

This is bad. This is very, very bad. Okay, sure, the Chihuelans who had been executed had kind of tried to invade Tu Vushan but executions were all different kinds of no. This is what Team Iron Man was supposed to stop. Pepper has half a mind to fly in stealth mode up to the Justicar and knock a few teeth out, but she'd rather not start a war. Tony might not be so wary. She knows him; the Chihuelans were executed on College grounds, and Tony is probably going to take that really, really badly. She needs to find him. The suit is seeing a lot of use lately, and Pepper is really hoping she won't have to use it on him.

C. Jade Dojo | September 6 | Closed to Bakura

Pepper wanted to go straight to the summoning, do not stop, do not collect 200 juulan, go directly to Shadow Monsters, but Bakura wouldn't let her. There had been some pouting and wheedling, but he didn't budge. She hadn't really expected him to, but it was worth a try, right? Since she now has closer to what would legally be considered a full deck, they can play the card game well enough for her to learn the rules. And she's even been doing her homework! Pepper dutifully flips through the cards at least once a day, and it's a regular part of her routine now.

D. Throughout Keeliai and outside the city | During the Chihuelans 'visit' | Open

Brave Vesperia members had been commissioned to follow the Chihuelans - sneakily - and Pepper is happy to do what she's told. The stealth mode of her suit is endlessly useful, and it means she can move around almost entirely undetected. She isn't totally silent, however, so she has to keep an eye on the noise the armor makes in order to avoid alerting the people she's stalking. There had been others who had volunteered to monitor the Chihuelans as well, and she's been partnered with a few. Being outside the city would be a lot more fun if there wasn't the hint of a threat everywhere they went.

E. Sky Sector | September 27 | Open

A letter arrived for Pepper at the house, which is weird in and of itself. What is even weirder is what the letter says. She's heard about the Dreaming and some of the weird things that come out of it, but she's wary of believing this one. If she didn't write it to herself though, it's a seriously scary thing. She's sitting in one of the public areas of Sky Sector, reading the letter over and over, trying to wrap her head around it in a way that makes sense.

OOC: If you want a starter hit me up at plurk or PM me!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Although he was never effusive with his praise, Bakura was impressed with Pepper's progress. Duel Monsters in itself was not a difficult game to learn -- it had, after all, been designed by Pegasus to be undertaken by all ages -- but having a sense of the game of it was something that could not be taught.

All the Duelists that Bakura knew, ones that had earned that title and not merely ones who dabbled only in the mechanics of playing it, had a certain aspect that they embraced. Both the Pharaoh and Yuugi relied referred to it as the heart of the cards and while saccharinely named, there was some truth to the concept itself. Theirs was strategy, Jonouchi's was luck, Kaiba's was brute strength, and Bakura's own was risk. All of them could play the game in any style, but those areas were where they had the best results.

So while he was pleased to see Pepper becoming more familiar with the cards, with how they worked together and supported each other, he was also carefully looking out for something which might, if she indeed possessed it, be the thing that made her capable of connecting to the cards on that level.

He had turned aside her previous requests to attempt summoning until now, but perhaps it was time to try an experiment.

"Biahbenat," he said, watching her handle her deck. "We're going to try something new today."

Pepper is somewhere in between 'advanced beginner' and 'intermediate' level, such that she's got the basic rules down pat, but some of the more advanced mechanics of Duel Monsters trip her up. More often than not, she forgets exactly how something works, or fails to use effective or long-term strategies. It's an almost deceptively simple game, and even with her limited set of cards she gets the feeling that each one can prove critical to the course of a game. It's sort of similar to how pawns are actually really important in chess, but a lot more interesting.

She looks up from her deck, blinking at him for a moment.

"Um. Okay." Bakura seemed to be doing his best to keep her guessing at all times, practically about all things. "What exactly are we going to be doing? Deck swapping? Card quizzes? Please don't say quizzes, I hate pop quizzes."

"Something a little more practical today," he answered. Pepper had seen him summon several times at this point, as he had shown her the parallels of what she was doing with cards to what translated to the creatures' actions -- switching from attack to defensive mode, being affected by equipment cards, what it looked like when they were boosted or detrimented by a field spell.

But this was going to be a little different.

"I'd like to try holding a summon-- the energy for one, at least. It's more of a drain than you might realize, when you're not used to it."

In the space of three sentences, Pepper goes from intrigued to excited before coming to a hard stop at confused. Then excitement starts to creep back in - Bakura doesn't seem to be talking about summoning creatures himself, at least not exactly. That means something different is about to happen, and suddenly the wheels are turning again at light speed.

"So... you're going to, what, use something else to summon? Is there a Millennium Battery, too?" Then it clicks. "Oh. You mean me, don't you? Seriously, do I get to summon something? I mean, you're the one actually doing it because you can do magic and I can't yet but it's my energy so it's kind of like I'm doing it, right?" Her voice is tight with nervous excitement.

He's able to follow that excited track, and he privately wonders if he's just getting better at Pepper-ese. But he nods to show that she's hit upon the right reasoning. "We'll start wit something small," he answered. "But let's go outside for it anyway."

There was a small grassy area behind the dojo, too limited to really be called a yard, but private enough and usable for this sort of thing. "And for the record, the Ring isn't what allows me to summon," he added, and they went around the side of the building to the back. "It can amplify it, certainly, but I could so it long before the Ring was ever in my possession. It does, however, allow me to do things like this."

He'll drag his hand through the air, fingers curled as though to draw from an invisible deck; really, that's all he's doing, and the deck is part of his mind, made real by the shadow magic he uses. A card materializes, and he passes it to Pepper, letting her look it over before they start.

"Well. Right. But it helps," Pepper finishes lamely as she follows him to the grassy area behind the dojo.

His card trick earns a small noise of excitement. It was just as amazing as when he'd pulled that Plague Wolf and first introduced her to Duel Monsters.

"That will never not be cool," she notes, smiling as she takes the card and looks at it. "So, this is what you're summoning? It looks like a feral cat that got on the wrong side of an evil Bedazzler." She reads the description and the creature's stats, satisfied with what he meant by 'small'.

"Okay. Feral unicorn cat it is." Pepper hands the card back. "Is there something you need me to do?"

It was hard to explain what this would feel like, so Bakura didn't think it wise to try. Showing Pepper, in the safe constraints of him actually doing the summoning, was the best way. "Just try to keep your wits," he said lightly, so she would know he was teasing... and yet, not.

When she seemed ready, Bakura extended his magic and pulled the Milus into being.

For Pepper, it would feel like a massive surge of energy, right before it sucked back out, almost like a vacuum. As the gold-furred creature materialized on the grass in front of them, she would feel hyper-connected to it; she'd learn, in time, to separate herself a little from the sensation, but for a first summoning, it would nearly feel like she was in two places at once. The summoning also went after a very particular type of energy, not just physical as would make her tired or unfocused, but as if the Milus was drawing on the types of things that made her Pepper. Her buoyancy, her sense of fairness, her dedication to her friends.

C.

i am excite

omg me too

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E

lasergrenades

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