Prompt 5 (Ice Bath): Rainfall is rare in Destiny City during Winter; there have been a few light showers between the occasional snow but it’s never been enough to be significant. In some places, it’s just enough for a thin layer of ice to cover the ground and make it a little slippery, but ultimately it’s not enough to worry about.
In an inconspicuous place in town, you step into one of these icy puddles and the thin layer of ice shatters. The hole itself seems maybe three feet wide and if you’ve ever been in the area before you know it’s just a pothole a few inches deep at most. Except, when the ice shatters, you fall, plummeting into it as if it were a lake of icy water. It’s pitch black around you and only pale blue lights shimmer above you. The darkness is never ending and you can’t make out the details of anything except the shrinking hole above you. Maybe you remember how to swim and pull yourself out, maybe you black out and feel someone else pulling you out--either way, your frozen, soaking body is pulled from the puddle. The chill is immense, but if you look at the hole after being pulled out, all you can see is the ground below. There’s no sign that what you just experienced is real--except for the fact that you’re still soaking wet.
Most of the time, Farbauti didn’t mind his fuku too terribly much. Sure, the skirt was skimpy and shorter than he would’ve worn on his own time, as Vanya (had he been in the habit of wearing skirts, which he was not), but when he looked at some of the other fukus running around town? Farbauti sighed in relief that his own skirt was literally just some fabric with furry lining.
Honestly, he had no idea how senshi like Asmodeus and Murikabushi, with their much more complicated fukus and layers upon layers of fabric, could stand trying to do this senshi thing while dressed like that. Some of the Knights that Farbauti had seen out and about had far too much clothing on, too. Which sounded sort of shitty and objectifying, he thought, even saying it to himself, in the privacy of his own head. But Farbauti really just didn’t get how people could chase down Nega-creeps and youma without tripping all over themselves in outfits like that.
At least Demeter had gotten lucky when she’d powered up to super-senshi. Patrolling with her since that had happened, Farbauti had had time to appreciate her new skirt, which had a good deal in common with her old one. An extra layer underneath, sure, but that wasn’t the same thing as, for example, running around town like some opulently fancy, exceptionally gay, totally decked out designer cupcake, the way Murikabushi and his many, many layers of skirts did.
About the only thing Farbauti could think of to complain about right now, while he and Demeter took a patrol through Ramsett Park? Was that his fuku didn’t offer much in the way of protection from the cold and rain. Cold would’ve been bad enough on its own. Ditto for rain. Putting them both together, though? That had inspired Farbauti to reach into his subspace a sweatshirt—but before he could put it on, a thought occurred and he looked to Demeter.
“Are you holding up okay with the weather?” Strictly speaking, Farbauti had mostly stashed two hoodies in here because he’d worried about getting youma-slime or something all over one of them. But Demeter was pretty tiny herself, and with the cold being how it was…… “And if you’re not doing okay? I have two sweatshirts. You can pick between ‘Barbie Girl’ in pink and tie-dye with ‘I am Kenough.’…… Y’know, if you want?”
genovianprince
Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2023 12:02 pm
Demeter loved all kinds of weather. It was rare that there was something that could get her in a bad mood, unless it was like, natural disaster levels of wild weather. That was definitely a total bummer. But a little cold and rain didn't hurt her—maybe she'd get a cold, though...
"I kinda like this weather. I mean, I wouldn't wanna be out it in it for a long time or anything like that?" she said uncertainly, "But, like, it's really nice, especially curling up inside with a hot chocolate and a good boooo—"
The end of her sentence cut off as she stomped through a patch of ice that, a second ago, she'd been sure only concealed a pothole an inch or two deep, nothing serious. But this... no, this went on for seemingly forever, and the shock of cold to her body kept her locked up and unable to move.
Part of Farbauti had expected a shorter answer to the question of sharing a sweatshirt or not, but a longer answer didn’t entirely surprise him. Demeter was a very special person, which always sounded sort of mean and disingenuous to say about most people—but it was true, for her. She was kind and gentle in a way that a lot of people weren’t. She had more thoughts than she gave herself credit for a lot of the time. And sometimes, she’d get going on a train of thought with some observations that other people might’ve easily missed, which made her perspective on things incredibly valuable, even if other people didn’t always think so.
Farbauti would’ve been content to wait as long as she needed until she decided if she wanted “Barbie Girl,”“I am Kenough,” or nothing because she was fine, actually. Unfortunately, her pleasant thinking-out-loud got cut off very abruptly, and soon afterward, Demeter herself disappeared………into a pothole.
A pothole that definitely shouldn’t have been able to swallow up an entire person.
But this was Destiny City, and magical weirdness always happened in Destiny City. So, Farbauti dropped to his knees by the pothole instead of haggling with reality about whether or not this was really happening. Obviously, it was. Obviously, it had. At least he didn’t feel any Negaverse auras around them, so whatever had happened, it wasn’t some kind of evil, energy-draining nefarious s**t like whatever Farbauti had wandered into at the sleep center. Just average, run-of-the-mill Destiny City weirdness putting people in danger.
“Deme! Take my hand!” Getting down as low as he could, Farbauti thrust his arm into the water, hoping that it would find her. He didn’t know if she could hear him down there, but frankly, he didn’t know if he could pull her out that easily either. Enhanced senshi strength was great, but Farbauti hadn’t had very much to enhance. Simple math said that adding some extra strength on top of barely anything……didn’t help as much as one might have thought.
genovianprince
Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2023 1:32 pm
Demeter could only faintly hear the shout. Her body felt sluggish, like ice—truly a shocker, she managed to think to herself with the best sarcasm she could muster, and it was enough to make her burst with energy and reach for the grasping hand.
It pulled her up, up, up and out, right out onto the pavement, coughing and spluttering and shaking.
"I-I-I," she stuttered, looking up at Farbauti and hugging herself tightly, cold and wet and feeling rather like a drowned rat, "I am Kenough?"
How Farbauti managed to get Demeter up out of the ice, he really didn’t understand. Even with enhanced senshi strength, Farbauti often felt like he barely had anything going for him. Maybe powering up, like, doubled or tripled somebody’s extant strength, but last he’d checked, two or three times nothing only equaled more nothing. Sort of the same as how giving somebody who wasn’t much of anything magical powers hadn’t really made Farbauti cool or brave or capable, the way Asmodeus and Murikabushi were.
Mostly, it had made him a nothing-burger of a person who happened to have magical powers.
Still, he was a nothing-burger of a person who’d turned his subspace into something about as close as he could get to a doomsday prepper’s garage or basement. While Farbauti did take out the sweatshirts—which wound up deposited in his lap for now, neatly folded and ready to be worn in a moment or two—he grabbed a towel first and foremost. One of the things he’d read up on before coming north out of Louisiana had been how to deal with cold like this, and staying dry was crucially important. Or, in Demeter’s current case, first getting dry. As he draped the towel around her shoulders, Farbauti sighed.
“Once you’re dry,” he said, “do you maybe want to power down and head inside? I got some really good tips at work today, I can get you a hot chocolate or something to help you get warm?”
genovianprince
Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2023 4:17 pm
Demeter shuddered as she stood there, sopping wet, feeling like a drowned rat, outside, in the middle of winter, in a terrible magical city that had GIANT POTHOLES. She wished as hard as she could, just for a moment, that she'd not been born in this absolutely bonkers city, but alas. Destiny City was her home, and her home was filled with truly horrendous potholes. Magical ones. Ones that sucked you in and pulled you under like a half-frozen lake, clawing at you, trying to take you for itself and mark yet another grave in its watery body.
Ah, getting poetic was never really a good sign for her, she mused, clutching the towel around her more tightly. It provided little warmth, but it did provide a little protection from the bitter, hideous wind that blew, sharp and cold and unyielding, straight through her wet clothes and nearly through her body, too.
"Inside sounds great," she agreed, dropping her voice to a whisper. "Um, I mean, if I power down, I won't be wet anymore, but I'm not sure I want to do that right in public. I don't feel anyone else nearby, but they might know a Senshi lives here now, if we're not careful enough."
Farbauti leaned in close when Deme lowered her voice, and as soon as she said her piece, he cringed, feeling like a dumb-a** for not having thought about that himself. “Yeah,” he agreed, keeping his own voice down. “Plus—I don’t know? The Negaverse seems to think of, like, everything? I mean, they have a gazillion different kinds of youma or something, and their weirdos in the military uniforms can do all kinds of different things, plus they have senshi? Who’s to say they don’t have tech that could try to track us or something?”
Hell, there was all kinds of tracking information in the average cell-phone and online shopfront purchase. The Negaverse probably could’ve doxxed anybody they wanted, if they had the right kind of tech people working on it. A terrifying thought, and one that made Farbauti shiver to consider.
Still, he tried to give Demeter a small, reassuring smile as he looked back at her. “Well, regardless of anything else? I don’t think I’ve told you yet? But your super-senshi glow-up looks really cute on you. I know the pumpkin theme isn’t super-Christmasy, and you probably feel kinda weird wearing it right now when everything’s all kinds of Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and winter, winter, winter, but……” He shrugged, and said simply, “You look good. And if nobody else has said it yet, I’m proud of you for getting there.”
genovianprince
Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2023 6:32 pm
Demeter grinned, shivering some more. She took a moment to look around and sense—nothing. She quickly powered down. It was probably fine?
"Aww, thank you. Believe me, yeah, I kinda hate the un-theming. But thank you! I'm glad I look nice anyway. But let's go in for that hot chocolate. It sounds perfect." She beamed.
