Participants:
| Scene Title | kimulimuli |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Experimentation starts, leaving the experimenter cranky and the teacher/help bestowing a new nickname. |
| Date | June 1, 2010 |
Curfew is in a few hours, and surely by then, experimentation time should be over. Following Cat's instructions with regard to the medication, enough time had passed since taking the negation pill. This left Abigail and Huruma deep in the bowels of the Ruins of midtown. Was about the only place one could practice an ability without being caught. Or lighting things on fire.
Hospital johnnies pilfered, the kind that are a wear once paper that have a cloth texture, They're sitting in a pile on top of a blanket and some chemical heat packs that have yet to be cracked. That's for after she implodes. She's put some thought into this. On top of the hood of a rusted out vehicle, the pink haired EMT is regarding Huruma, wriggling her nose side to side in consternation as she goes through logistics.
"I mean, really… I had an ability for 8 years. I could just think over what turned it on and off, when I wasn't trying to… which was.." When someone really upset her. "OKay, well… I bet your son would know. he seems the smart kind"
Huruma has on a considerably lighter coat as compared to weeks previous, but she still somehow looks displeased about it. She leans up against the old carapace of steel where Abby is, watching the girl with a mix of curiosity and apprehension. New abilities are always something that she is interested in, though in this case Abigail's is close for comfort and somewhat worrisome. If she can burn down a building on accident, there is surely much more that she doesn't know that she can do.
"Dajan's ability relies on his level of anger, no'just its existing." Huruma answers after a short pause, eyes half-lidded and arms buckled around her middle. Her weight sways on one leg, the other boot scraping on icy ground with a knock of heel. Her breath leaves out through both nostrils, a plume of faux-smoke. "You also'ad prayer, did you not? I woul'not be surprised if he did as well. Among other things." Another moment passes, and a shadow of memory passes behind Huruma's pale eyes. She will allow Abby to have the reins on how this goes; for now, however, if it is only discussion, all fine and good.
"Wait, you mean… Dajan is gifted as well?!"
That's a shock. Really. But it makes sense. If Huruma is then quite likely, her children would be. "Prayer was yes, for the healing. So… utter a prayer and hope I go up in flame?" It's actually quite a sound Theory and it surprises the former blonde. "Wonder if that would work to turn me out of being en flambe?"
Her jacket is peeled off, slipping arms out of sleeves before passing over the arctic quality jacket. One of the johnnies laid out on the snow so that she can toss her shoes over next, socks. Come a few minutes later, she's down to just one of those johnnies and chattering at the cold and all clothing has been salvaged and put to the side safe.
Though Huruma feels the need to try and offer her coat back, Abby does not need it. It takes a moment for her to pass by the reaction, sidling slowly away to a peripheral place. Her saunter is slow, eyes on the cotton candy hair. "I did no'tell you about him? He is a terrakinetic." Huruma's accent nips slightly at the word, and it is clear that she has some pride in what her son is able to do, judging by the swell of breath and lifted chin. Silent and sticky fingers wander over from Huruma's mind to Abby's, hooking in a few steady lifelines to monitor her emotional state. The tall woman's eyes are settled on her, studious.
"I suspect prayer calms you. Unless you'ave been feeling …vengeful in th'name of God." Abigail as a Paladin! On fire! Huruma drawls, allowing Abby her patience. "…Tell m'what you need."
Prayer to turn it on, prayer to turn it off. Feasible. Possible. "Save prayer for calming me down. I know if I got really angry I'd sometimes end up having it turn on. I did that to Conrad a time or two, others. Which is sorta where you come in too. Not just for the calming me down, keeping me calm. Really strong emotions can set a person off. Really bad pain and fear.. that was what was happening when I manifested. Worry."
Lots of fear though. Of which, there is some, muddled in with worry, curiosity. As usual, the EMT is a bundle of many emotions, a veritable emotional soup being stirred by a wooden spoon. She shivers, stamping her feet, fingers curled into and around her waist. Why couldn't summer just be here already instead of a wintery memorial weekend.
"If you do no'instruct me, I will do this however I please." Huruma says after a few cold, quiet seconds. On one hand, deferring to her may get results faster- on the other hand, she would not know when to give up. Something in Abby pulls at the dread underneath of everything already; whatever hook that Huruma has inside of her is bringing it to the surface like a fishing pole and its quarry.
Lack of being instructed is one other thing wrong with perhaps deferring to the older woman- sometimes, really- she just does not listen well at all. Or want to.
"I'm sorry Huruma, I'll consult my 'how to be a virtual pyro' manual, or pass it over to you to read so that you can better understand what I'm going through" Snapped off by the former healer as she shifts her weight back and forth. "I'm not exactly old at tocontrolling an ability, not this one at least. It was a passive ability before this one is… offensive, it's very … destructive and Heavens I know exactly what I ca-"
She can feel that stirring, the rise in the level of dread. Something will go wrong, she'll burn Huruma, or worse, someone from the company or even this institute will come by. They've been in the ruin before haven't they? Paranoia is a comfortable companion for dread, but with her own thoughts cycling higher what Huruma started, it's not hard to feel or to see the effect of the heat that's pouring off of her.
A noise comes from Huruma at the heat starting off of the girl. A murmur of pleasure down in her throat as she sidles further away again, eyes transfixed and arms drifting to her sides. Huruma may have a cerebral ability, but the physical is by no means above her understanding.
"Now-" Huruma breathes in, lungs filling with the heated air already steaming up around Abigail. She exhales in a hiss, framed by a haze, eyes glinting. "Tell me, what is it you fear? Right now? Why such distress, Abigail…?" The hook slips out of the girl's feeling of anxiety, her worry. It has been brought up for air, it is up to Abby to do what she thinks she must, with it there. The girl will either feed it or squelch it- Huruma hopes the former, for her own reasons.
"I don't want to get taken away by men in white biological suits. I don't want agent Parkman to be in trouble for covering up what I am now, I don't… Oh lord you did this." Huruma did this, jacking up her emotion till the woman was melting snow around her. Two seconds later, there goes the paper dress, the woman already doing an impression of the venus de milo and covering up herself for the whole other two seconds that it takes for her to transition once she'd cycled high enough in her fear, imagining that there might be men just around the corner.
Combustion takes place, five feet around her the snow melts, ice turning into water as her skin and everything slughs off and burns up leaving behind the fire nymph in it's wake with the distinctly features of Abigail in her face. Just the coronal skin and a little more skinnier than she should be. One ghostly step backwards, ice and snow giving way to her form as she floats above the ground ghostlike.
Huruma waits, jaw clenched as Abby responds with her first words. Seconds later, however, that grinding set of teeth loosens in Huruma's skull; the muscles in her neck slacken, and her chin lifts while she watches, entranced in earnest. The snow melts, steam rises, ice trickling and pooling over concrete. The empath in the thickened haze of steam lifts an arm to swat air into circulation, gesture wide. Firelight glances off of Abigail over Huruma, lighting ebony skin in warm orange and white irises into shining reflections.
"Lovely."
Huruma's inner thrill almost crosses the line between them; what comes through to the girl on the other end, however, is a mote of something new, something that begins warming over the ice cold dread. A toasty feeling of delight, of something like satisfaction churning like butter through her fears. Huruma's ability jousting freely with Abby's brain. It's never been quite like this, when she used her ability on her before. A taste of how she truly can function.
"Concentrate on me, now-" The smooth voice cuts through metaphorical fog, with its sharpness. "Tell me what you think of fire."
Issue with that, that soon becomes apparent even through the hazy delight that sweeps in like a gale across her mind. She did it. She switched over and without burning down any buildings or people, hoooray! Frustration.
For all that Huruma is asking her to tell her what she thinks of fire - which at the general time since she manifested has been fascination and curiosity but not in a firebug kind of way - Abigail can't tell her because the younger woman is bereft of a voice when she's in this state. She can hear, she can see. The pale blue's almost white of Huruma's body in relations to the dark blue's of the surrounding city scape.
An ever shifting skin covered hand lifts, palm sliding across her mouth and her head shakes side to side, flames flaring out in relation to the movement. Can't speak.
Huruma can continue here, without response. Her eyes shade downward once, head nodding fluid and slight.
"Fire is destruction-" Her hand motions behind her. To the ruins of Midtown, charred underneath of the mountainous snowfall. "And it is a source of life, of comfort. It mus'b'treated as such, n'matter what you believe.
"Over all else, you must remember that." There may well be homework on the less scientific aspects of fire. "Harmony is th'mainstay of control- it is as for you too, again." That is why she mentioned prayer in resolution towards calm. "For now, 'owever- fire and oxygen is your harmony. It may sound cliche if I tell you t'start breathing steadier. Do it regardless, if you please. One …two, one …two." Huruma does her part, only in offering Abby some measure of stability by trying to whittle away at the negative storm in her mind.
She can't breath in this form. She can't very well tell huruma that either and there's a slight buzz of annoyance at being told to do something that she very well can't. But annoyance comes and goes as fast as Huruma tackles in and she remains rooted in her little spot in midtown, snow melted away in a five foot radius and counting, exposing the ground and debris beneath that has been hidden all winter. She could very well melt everything in this city if she spent enough hours doing it or didn't mind getting caught.
But she still doens't breath in this form, not in the way that one might think. The whole of her does, the coronal surface consuming oxygen as it goes. So she remains there, standing, looking at Huruma in that different way and imagining that she can breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. It has the effect of settling the flames down, tighter, less out of control and flaring around her.
Though Huruma can feel that tiny bubble of irritation at being told the impossible- she says nothing on the matter and waits silently for Abby's magmatic figure to change even slightly. She is rewarded with Abby's flare becoming more compact, bringing a subtle look of pleasure to the dark woman lit by the flame. See, now? A muted bloom of assisting calm sprouts inside of Abby now, her own reward for being able to find her technically nonexistent breath.
"I am showing you th'same as I was taught." Huruma finally speaks again, allowing Abby a moment wherein she is not exploding or like a gasket of lit chemical blowing wild. "I coul'bring it into mind, but once I woul'get going- it was difficult t'stop. Calming techniques will be your best ally in this, Abigail."
She's listening, an unseeing glance Huruma's way that shows she's paying attention if about the only other indicator. That and the tightening in of the flames and heat. Lips purse and she nods, bringing up a hand, pal facing inwards to look at it. She's not really given herself a chance to experiment yet. The first was manifestation and dealing with what she and Francois had done, the burning of her bar and not knowing whether she would survive or not. The other had been in grand central for a total of a minute at most before she was extinguished.
Lessons of calming are abandoned, and lessons of exploration taken forth. Her silhouette bends over for all that it it is just manipulating her shape to give that impression on it's own. Extending a hand towards the snow with fingers splayed, melting it as she goes, forging a little path away from Huruma and her initial hole in the snow.
Huruma's curiosity in Abby's curiosity is obvious, the dark woman a stalking shadow in the haze rolling around in the air. She follows, diligent in her task.
"Are you entirely fire?" Huruma's questioning is rhetorical, as she knows she cannot get a verbal answer. Instead, she muses out loud, her voice alight with what wonder she can spare. "If you are- there is no reason your body cannot act th'part…" It is not clear what she is getting at before she moves on, slowing down slightly.
Once she starts doing this, she lets out a soundless wave of further calm towards Abby, making an attempt to cause the fire state to cease.
A shifting bob of her head, accompanied by a shrug, a lifting of coronal shoulders before she turns back to melting snow, trying to make shapes, see how far the range of the heat flows. Her feet never touch the ground, seeming to float, but when she walks, she walks as a sedate pace, just that little bit above the ground, leaving scorching paths in her wake.
Curiosity rampant, the calm spreads but doesn't do what Huruma wants. The fire doesn't cease, she doesn't compact the flames more. Abigail hunkers down, form folding in on herself like some etheral fire nymph with her hand still extended. Calm isn't going to turn it off it seems. A deliberate grab for snow, quicker than it can be melted is met with a quick pulling back of her hand as if she was stung or hurt and a recoil.
"Don'touch water." That is the most basic idea of fire, period. The influence on Abby ebbs away, leaving the younger woman to her own emotional devices now, for the time being. Huruma stands still, ever watchful and voice almost acting as a guide to Abby's first person adventure. Listen, listen. Asking it for hints where there are none, making keen (and obvious) observations. "Not when you are like this. I am being literal when I hazard a guess tha'you may die if you are dowsed." Better safe than sorry.
And here she had been telling a few people to just dump a bucket of water on her. There's a real fear in that. Cradling palm to other molten palm, she starts cycling through a prayer, had enough experimentation time for today and tries the trick that worked so well when she was a healer. Pray for it to start, pray to the lord for permission to heal. Only now it's praying to the lord that she'll un-turn from fire and back into who she should be.
Only she lacks the focus and concentration. She didn't turn into this form on her own, but with help from Huruma and time ticks by with no reversion to Abigail of flesh. How long would she stay like this if she couldn't turn it off? The fire had burned for //hours at the bar. Panic flares up again, the fire around her flaring out here and there from lack of calm and concentration. But a fire extinguisher was brought for this purpose, pilfered from the few she'd scrounged from the Ferry for protection. Just in case of flaming.
Huruma does not immediately respond with anything, for a moment finding odd comfort in having a source of warmth. She reminds herself that it is actually Abby a moment later. A drop of calm moves at Abby, trying to massage her discontent into smoothness. "Learn t'make th'distinction between desperation and desire, Abigail.
"You are getting desperate t'change back, I can feel it. Panic is unbecoming. Do your breathing, don'forget." Huruma finishes only as she shifts away from where Abby is spurting heat and flame, eyes only drawing away when she turns back to find the fire extinguisher to have it in hand.
Oh the words that she'd throw back at Huruma, like a petulant child being chastized for something that they don't understand or don't want to understand. WHy don't you trying being this, like this. How about you relearn your ability from scratch you black skinned cannibalistic… something or other.
But huruma can't hear and she is desperate to change back only because she's scared. Lesson time is over in the EMT's mind and there's a gesture towards the fire extinguisher in Huruma's hand. She turns away, giving her back to the bouncer, hands coming up to protect her face from what she knows is coming.
Huruma makes a slight snort, a scoff that comes from both her nose and mouth while she returns as close as she can get without being scorched. It's a precarious place, and hot to boot.
"Remember. You asked f'my help, Abigail. If you d'no'like how I do things, per'aps I am not a good teacher for you." Her words are steady, telling it how it is in the gentlest of terms. The snap of her teeth is audible as she steps back, unhinging the trumpet-shaped nozzle of the extinguisher and aiming it towards Abby's feet; when it turns on, it hits her legs first, Huruma now at the stage of trying to put her out.
OR maybe she's exactly what needs, or part of what she needs. No answer from Gabriel yet, despite Peter thinking that the man would step up to the plate. The suffocation starts not long after the chemical starts coating her legs and Huruma works her way up. Three quarters of the way covering her, it has it's desire effect, coronal skin welling out to her true proportions and guttering out where it isn't covered to reveal her flesh beneath.
It leaves a gasping and wheezing white covered mess, with pink hair loose as her elastic burned up in the fire. It leaves a cold Abigail, standing on the ground with a circle of melted snow, run off water and arm slung across her chest, and other, hand splayed across her hips.
"Oh my sweet lord that is cold" Wheezed out, hopping from foot to foot.
"…You wanted it." Huruma replies, nonchalant, one shoulder rolling upwards, hand dropping the black horn of the extinguisher. Her lips curl into a smile, and her head jaunts into a tilt as she observes Abby in her- er- natural state. Her watch is unsettling, at best. "You could be warm again, you know-" At the moment, Huruma doesn't move to fetch the discarded coat or clothes.
"Very lovely trick, kimulimuli. I can see now, why th'bar went as fast as it did."
"No" Abby states, precisely and with conviction. "I've had enough experimentation today and learning. Can i have one of the gowns to wipe off with and start cracking heat packs please. Dark is coming and I don't want to be out here and I've worked all day too so I just want to go get dinner and think on things" Abigail's quick to snap, then squinting her eyes in apology as she works to suck in air. Far better to be wheezy than dead from water if what Huruma's suggests is true. "Sorry"
"It may b'best t'find another person similar- as close as possible. Or someone physical an' unsubtle. T'supplement this." Huruma does not take it personally, it appears, as she moves to fetch the items for Abby, in lieu of the extinguisher. "Now I know exactly what you are working with." This part is extremely important. And Abby still has homework, for the record.
"The only pyro I know, died and Peter doesn't trust his own self control and I haven't heard back from the other and if I don't hear back, that's just as fine." The hospital gown is snatched up, draped over herself as a means to protect her modesty, the other used to start wiping herself down. It's an uncomfortable feeling she's still left with post-transition, but at least she's not flaming. Maybe she'll wait for a weekend when they're not ferrying DOA's or digging out elderly people from their homes and frostbite victims who couldn't get out, to the hospital, to go up in flame and see how long she stays like that.
minutes pass - really cold minutes - and she's gotten off as much as she can get off without a shower. Clothing is fetched, layer upon layer heat packs stuck in pockets or held under arms as she shivers in the cold air, waiting to get warm.
Huruma does her best to help Abby to wrap herself up again in layers and heating packs, discarding what can be discarded there, and lastly offering one long arm to the pink-haired girl- a wing opening up in vague hopes that the chick might duck underneath.
"You will manage, sooner or later."
"Better be sooner, rather than later" Is the pink haired womans smart ass reply as she ducks under that offered wing and walks with her through the melting snow. Sooner, rather than later for sure.