Snowy Showdown (16) : There’s something magical about fresh fallen snow–completely undisturbed and untouched by the rest of the world. It should be relaxing and peaceful–a sign that no one has been around and you’re perfectly safe. Except, the best predators lie in wait, completely invisible to their prey. What do you do when a patch of snow starts clumping together and taking shape right before your eyes?
When it all comes together, it looks like a person, only there are no features, just a snowy white form. Maybe there wouldn’t have been an issue if you hadn’t seen it, but it’s too late. In frantic, panicked movements, it lunges at you with icy fists. It feels like being pelted with snowballs, but each hit lowers your core body temperature–rapidly. The creature is highly susceptible to heat and will melt if exposed to it; if you hit it, snow splatters everywhere.
It may attempt to reform, but eventually it loses strength. You might not want to stick around to see if it just needs a little more time. If the creature manages to knock you unconscious, you may wake up covered in snow and with a bad cold. You may be more aware of strange, snowy figures that seem to be standing around in odd places; who knows where these things are hiding?
Note: This strange snow monster is not a youma but can be used as a battle requirement for a character. It can only be used as a battle if there are two powered characters involved; you cannot write a solo and count this as a battle, and your character must be powered to meet battle requirements. You can use the prompt for as many characters as you like and it will count as a battle requirement, however if you repeat the prompt with the same character, only the first time will be usable as a battle.
Ever since Destiny City had started snowing, Thalassa had gained a new appreciation for why several of the now extinct species that had once graced his homeworld had preferred to hibernate through the worst parts of winter. Powering up took some of the edge off, the magic of a senshi fuku protecting him from some of the worst side-effects that came with being so much thinner than he had been once. But when powered down, Heibing Morningstar required multiple layers of fabric just to feel comfortable and it was terrible.
It felt a bit disrespectful, he supposed, bothering a local Mauvian about a human glamour only to lapse out of using it too often within only a few months, but……well. Cold felt bad, now. What the ******** was Thalassa supposed to do, exactly, when the weather he most preferred for aesthetics and a sense of internal calm wracked his body with shivers and made him yearn to rip somebody else’s eyes out? True, doing that wouldn’t have helped with the cold, which was the big reason why Heibing hadn’t bothered, but from the way some of the odd twenty-first century humans used the word “enrichment,” he thought that wrenching someone else’s eyes out of their skull would have counted.
At least Thalassa didn’t need to worry about the cold as much. The wind whipping around him as he and Troilus made their way through a freshly fallen snowdrift in the middle of a park—yeah, that gnawed at Thalassa’s nerves somewhat. But it would’ve been worse for him if he’d powered down.
“I’m supposed to be relieved to see all this white s**t again,” Thalassa grumbled, glancing up at the sky and wondering if more snow would start falling just to spite him. “And I am. On some level. It’s been literal centuries since my world had any. But—” He shivered, despite his best efforts to maintain composure and be very cool and cranky. “—Yeah. That part, exactly. This thing where cold and I don’t get along anymore. Incredibly irritating.”
genovianprince
Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2024 2:17 pm
Troilus walked alongside Thalassa, arms up and hands locked behind his head in a relaxed manner. He loved the brisk air. It was, yes, incredibly cold, but it reminded him of Thalassa the planet. He missed it. Probably Thalassa himself missed it more, though.
"I'm sorry," he said sympathetically. "Hopefully we can help you fix that. Maybe getting back to Eternal will help? As well as putting those fat layers back on?"
Something caught his eye, movement just on the edge of his vision, and he turned. His arms dropped to his side—appearing casually loose, but ready for anything.
The snow piles nearby quivered.
"Well, that's probably not good," Troilus said, tilting his head at it. "I don't think snow is supposed to move on its own, and I really don't think there's some normal creature under there."
At least having Troilus back as himself was something nice in which Thalassa could take comfort. One of his best friends wouldn’t return to them as he had been—Bernard, unfortunately, had pretty unquestionably perished and was probably reborn somewhere in this city but gods only knew where—but Thalassa had Pyrrhus and he had Troilus. He didn’t need to ingratiate himself with new versions of them who might not have understood that Thalassa being grouchy didn’t mean he didn’t like someone, it was just sort of his general disposition.
He didn’t need to be ******** alone. For someone who had very highly prized his privacy and right to solitude a thousand years ago—who had, among other things, once bitten his older brother hard enough to draw blood, all because Yuanhan had tried to stop Heibing from getting a lock on the door into his personal living quarters—it remained odd to Thalassa that he no longer wanted to be alone. But he didn’t, and maybe that made sense after a thousand years of isolation from anyone remotely resembling a living soul.
For the moment, however, Troilus’s easy optimism provided a warm balm to the biting cold. Thalassa turned to look at him more directly, a response ready on his lips—but then, the snow piles trembled. While Troilus peered at them quizzically, Thalassa shifted to stand slightly in front of his friend, placing himself between Troilus and the snow-pile. Not too much so, Thalassa didn’t want Troilus to feel overprotected or babied when Troilus could perfectly handle himself in a scrap. Still, Troilus was one of Thalassa’s People and Thalassa had more experience with the sorts of creatures that lived in snow. So help him, he would not allow Troilus to come to harm.
He wouldn’t lose one of the only people who actually liked him so soon after getting Troilus back.
Still, Thalassa didn’t expect what came next. No animal or non-person creature bounded out of the snow-pile. Instead, the snow-pile itself seemed to move. The snow shifted around, reshaping itself, first moving into two piles and then stacking itself higher, higher, higher. Eventually, the snow-pillars moved back together, becoming legs as more snow moved into them and up, forming a torso, and then arms, and finally a head.
“Is this some Negaverse trickery,” Thalassa wondered aloud, but—no. His aura senses said that it couldn’t have been. He didn’t feel any Negaverse Chaos lurking nearby, whether youma or humanoid. “If it isn’t them, then—”
Thalassa didn’t have time to finish that question.
With a guttural roar, the snow-beast cut Thalassa off, then flung itself into a charge, rushing toward him and Troilus, flailing its arms like some frightened animal.
genovianprince
Posted: Sat Dec 14, 2024 5:29 pm
Troilus did feel a bit bemused at Thalassa for moving into position to protect him—but he knew Thalassa knew that Troilus knew how to fight, so there must have been some threat he didn't understand of the snow yet, something that would catch him off-guard in a way that it would not do to Thalassa.
So he was perfectly content right up until the second that Thalassa asked if it was Negaverse trickery, and then he began to worry. Really worry.
And then the snow-being roared and Troilus had enough time to think Ah, s**t! before it slammed into him and holy ******** that was cold, cold cold cold!!! He shrieked, flailing and trying to get it off, all fighting training out the window in favor of frantic movements to get the snow off himself.
Troilus shivered, climbing back up off the ground once Thalassa had kicked the snow monster off himself.
"Okay, that's new," he said, rubbing his arms. "What the—" Oh, no, the ******** thing was reforming. His heart seized in his chest and he fell back on his instincts of "listen to Thalassa in all things snow". He dove behind Thalassa's back and stayed low, letting Thalassa take the lead.
Just like old times. The idea made him miss the old times terribly, heart aching as much as it was tense with adrenaline.
"You got this, Thal!" he shouted encouragingly. "Hopefully it won't rebuild itself again?"
Whatever faith Troilus had in him, Thalassa appreciated it. Not that anyone would’ve been able to tell from the serious, highly focused scowl he wore as he danced around a flurry of (attempted) blows from the snow-creature. Externally, Thalassa was the picture of determination, refusing to hold still while the creature tried to pin him down, or at least land a single hit. Wearing down an opponent had always been the best way to ensure that they wouldn’t get back up when you wanted them defeated.
Unfortunately, Thalassa’s own stamina had declined over the past thousand years. As he felt himself starting to flag, he couldn’t help but think that it really wasn’t fair. He’d kept on going in unfathomably ******** up conditions. He had kept his body moving and his mind active for over a thousand years. Where did his sense of physical limitations get off, acting like it had any right to ******** around and desert him like it kept trying to do? Whatever, being so thin meant he didn’t have the same physical reserves that he’d had in his prime. Sounded like quitter talk to Thalassa, or at least the talk of someone who seriously ******** wanted him to kick their teeth in.
The senshi of exhaustion did not get swept away by the waves of fatigue. The senshi of exhaustion was the ******** tides.
And this snow-creature needed to learn that.
Leaping back from the beast, Thalassa planted his feet and pointed toward his opponent. Calling on his familiar magic, Thalassa snapped, “Weary Flop.”
That blow seemed to stagger the creature, stopping it dead in its tracks. As if it had expected something physical and didn’t know what to do upon getting hit by magic. Not a single idea to speak of, except succumbing to exhaustion and collapsing into a heap of snow.
genovianprince
Posted: Wed Dec 25, 2024 7:57 pm
Troilus knew his friend all too well. He knew how Thalassa moved, how he spoke, how he fought. He spotted the moment Thalassa began to tire, and fear gripped his heart. Slowly, he rose from his crouch and licked his lips to prepare himself to shout his spell, but... With a sigh of relief, he watched, shoulders slumping, as Thalassa cast his own spell, the snow creature finally collapsing into a sad little pile of snow that was no longer infected with that strange, aggressive life.
"Well," he said after a pause. "I think that was enough adventure for today, don't you, Thal? Perhaps we should head back home. Eat something."
He might have sounded a little flippant, but the suggestion was genuine. He didn't want to get Thalassa hurt, especially when he was being a coward.
