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?
Maybe Ilmari had been letting certain things—and, moreover, certain people—get to his head. Except, as he slithered through yet another fine Destiny City park, draining individual civilians along the way, he knew that there was no “maybe” about this. None whatsoever. Ever since that encounter with the little Pumpkin Spice senshi who’d thrown a rock at his face, Certain Thoughts had plagued his every waking moment, refusing to leave him alone so he could just focus on things properly. He had work to do, energy to gather, reports to file (and to edit properly, in the case of Albite’s reports), so many little tasks to keep him busy and Ilmari simply did not need any shades of doubt creeping into his life.
All the nonsense that Sailor Pumpkin Spice had said about science and medicine, none of that could’ve been real, right? None of her ideas had made any sense. Entirely in defiance of good logic, if you asked Ilmari personally, who still had not read any of the things that Sailor Pumpkin Spice had suggested to him.
Yet, he found himself thinking about her as he made his way through the park’s shadows. In his head, he counted off steps for himself, since it wasn’t as though he could have his FitBit on while he was powered up as Ilmari. He was careful enough not to drain so much energy off of any single person that they would actually notice anything. And Ilmari hardly paused long enough to look at anybody who donated their energy to his orb, so no Order senshi who might have come along could have possibly justified calling him a bully or whatever. He needed to smother any thoughts that how he managed his personal life wasn’t working with a pillow and leave it at that. He needed to banish any notions of listening to Sailor Pumpkin Spice to Hell, where they belonged.
Really, what he needed was to pay better attention to his surroundings. Because, while Ilmari dedicated his thoughts to fuming about the advice he hadn’t wanted, and smothering any doubts that how he treated himself was anything other than perfectly correct, and draining energy off the civilians of Destiny City? A pile of snow a few paces off from Ilmari started to move and shift.
Posted: Mon Dec 30, 2024 1:29 am
Demeter loved the winter and the snow and hot chocolate and everything that came with it—except for the cold. Sure, she was mostly fine in her senshi getup. But at some point she had to travel about in her normal clothing, and while her winter fashion was both adorable and warm, she still had to put a lot of effort into staying warm, and it was really aggravating.
She sighed as she trudged around, keeping her senses on high alert for—aha. There it was. An aura. Lifting her head high, she scanned the area, moving towards the other aura in a slow zig-zag pattern and hoping that the odd movement would mean she would go undetected for just a bit longer. At least, undetected as far as "definitely moving towards the Chaos guy" went.
Then, right as she spotted him, she also saw a movement in the snow. No, from the snow. A pile of the snow itself quivered and rose up on hind legs—which, what the heck, since when did snow just magically transform into beasts?—and she watched as it formed front legs with claws, reaching out to hit—oh, son of a biscuit, it was that guy. Ugh.
Well, she wasn't a hero for nothing. "Look out!" she shouted, sprinting towards him as fast as she could and knocking him aside right as the snow claws came down on thankfully empty air.
The Order aura had Ilmari far more on-edge than literally anything about his actual surroundings. They were more powerful than he was, so frankly, they had no business sticking their nose into his affairs—not unless they wanted to be bullies, picking on someone weaker than they were (which, okay, in fairness, a lot of them did seem to be extremely Like That). Part of Ilmari would have welcomed the challenge—he needed, after all, to grow and improve if he wanted to truly do well in the Negaverse and give the team his best—but another part of him simply wanted to be left alone to do his job.
Turning toward the aura as it grew closer, Ilmari openly sighed like only the most exasperated of beautiful people being unfairly tested by reality. He didn’t allow himself to roll his eyes. Sailor Pumpkin Spice probably would’ve deemed that rude and used it to justify throwing another rock at his face. So help him, Ilmari did not want to give her that kind of satisfaction. While he focused on her, behind him, the snow started taking shape, moving on its own into a form that almost resembled a human. Two legs, a long torso, two arms, a mound where there could have been a head. Had Ilmari turned around, he could have perfectly seen what had Sailor Pumpkin Spice so spooked.
“Are you serious? I’m not even doing anything,” he protested, saying something that was technically true (there weren’t currently any civilians close enough for him to drain) and not even briefly considering that her warning might have been for him. He opened his mouth again to continue telling her off, but it was then that he finally heard something groaning and moving behind him.
Ilmari whipped out of the way just as the snow-beast’s claws came for him. Turning around to face the mysterious monster, he called out “Chaste Decorum!” and blew the beast a kiss.
genovianprince
Chaste Decorum: Ilmari selects a single target within ten feet and blows a kiss at them. Instantly, they feel a slight, illusory chill wash over them; the chill itself deals no damage. This chill puts targets in a chaste state of mind and resets them to a pure, unblemished state by cooling their passions, making emotions feel less potent, and urging targets to exercise restraint in their actions. This can be distracting and can leave enemies feeling dazed, stunned, or without any drive. These effects last for 30 seconds, and Ilmari may use this attack three times per battle.
Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2025 12:41 pm
Demeter skidded to a stop before she could fall over, breathing hard. She watched the monster suddenly sway on its feet, clearly confused, and it sat down on its strange buttocks, staring at the two Senshis warily.
"Nice magic you got!" she panted, clapping Ilmari on the shoulder. "Did it touch you at all? Are you safe? Do I need to heal you? And, if you're good to run, we should probably start running before your magic wears off and it wants to try to eat us again."
“No, no, I—I got out of the way before it could.” Ilmari did not say “thanks to you,” despite knowing that he probably should have. He hadn’t paid a damn bit of attention to the part of the snow where the monster had come from. He hadn’t noticed anything at all until Sailor Pumpkin Spice had swooped in and started yelling at him to watch out.
“Hang on,” he told her, his tone resolute as he put those thoughts out of his mind. He’d been in A ******** Mood for days—thanks for nothing, winter holidays and Sailor Pumpkin Spice herself, making him think about all sorts of garbage that flew right in the face of everything that Ilmari had to believe. Pulling up all of that frustration—at himself, at his parents and the winter holidays as a concept, at the reality of having housemates who expected there to be food in the house and seemed to find it weird and concerning when there wasn’t—Ilmari called to mind all the soccer he’d played back at Romano’s.
He threw all that anger into a fierce kick, stabbing his pointy-toed pump right through the spot that most approximated the snow-creature’s head. Snow went flying, splattered like blood all over the pavement. When Ilmari saw it start moving, though—inching back toward the main mass of magical snow—he took initiative by grabbing Sailor Pumpkin Spice’s hand. Without a word, he took off running, pulling her with him so they could get the ******** out of here.
genovianprince
Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2025 7:51 pm
Demeter sighed in relief when Ilmari confirmed he hadn't gotten hurt by the snow beast. She didn't know what it did, exactly, but she knew it wouldn't be good. The holidays were always so weird—better to be safe than sorry! She tilted her head at him curiously when he told her to hang on, watching him with careful eyes, only to burst out laughing when he kicked the head off the beast.
Laughter which quickly subdued when she realized it was trying to pull itself back together like some.. some... okay, she didn't have something to compare it to at the moment, but something horrifying, definitely! The hand grab took her by surprise, but she caught on and started to sprint with Ilmari.
"Think we ought to head up to a roof?" she panted, breath fogging the air in big puffs. "Might be clear of snow!"
CW: eating disorders, body image issues, body-shaming (self-directed), etc.
“This would be easier if I were a super like you,” Ilmari said without thinking about it. But, like, really: escaping would have been easier if he’d been more powerful and could have teleported elsewhere. Given that snow-monster thing, Ilmari would’ve even taken Sailor Pumpkin Spice with him, just to make sure she wasn’t fighting the beast on her own. For all Ilmari knew, she only had healing magic or something, and she had just managed to save him from gods only knew what.
Well. A snow-monster, yes, but gods only knew what the snow-monster in question could have been capable of.
Fortunately, it wasn’t terribly difficult to find a roof they could escape to. Right at the edge of the park sat a little building that DCU used as apartments for the grad students who couldn’t afford to get their own places in town but also didn’t want to stay in the main campus dormitories with all of the undergrads. (Ilmari couldn’t blame them, really. Even as an undergrad, he thought that living with undergrad students was cruel and unusual punishment that nobody deserved to suffer like that.) On the side of the building sat the fire escape, and with a few short jumps up that metal scaffolding, Ilmari and Sailor Pumpkin Spice would find themselves on a deserted rooftop.
There was still snow on said rooftop, but at least it had been cordoned off into different corners and didn’t seem to be moving. The most interesting thing about any of it was the presence of cigarette butts poking out amidst the white stuff, indicating that several of the residents and/or their guests had broken the university’s rules about where one was or wasn’t allowed to smoke. Any university housing, even the off-campus options like this, forbade smoking within twenty-five feet of the building, which Ilmari had to assume included the roof.
But sneering at the cigarette butts without saying anything left an awkward silence hanging in the air between Ilmari and Sailor Pumpkin Spice. He felt it awkward, anyway. Whether or not she felt the same way wasn’t his place to say, but……eugh. She’d shown him kindness by, like, actually caring whether or not he got pummelled by a snow-monster that ran on General Destiny City Weirdness, so he probably owed her something, right? At the very least, he owed her enough that tonight wouldn’t stay hanging over his head, forcing him into the unenviable position of owing her genuine favors somewhere down the line.
Unfortunately for Ilmari, he didn’t know enough about Sailor Pumpkin Spice to guess what she might have liked or not, which only left him with one option that felt particularly viable for paying up what he owed this girl.
“……While I have you here,” he said, doing his level best to hold back a sigh, “I’m sorry.…… For upsetting you so much, last time we ran into each other. With, erm? With how I talked about that civilian I was draining at the time?” Not that Ilmari really thought he was wrong about anything he’d said, but……well. He could also admit that, on reflection (the reflection that Sailor Pumpkin Spice had spurred him into by challenging him to read up on the medical science that she chose to believe), he hadn’t actually been thinking about that young lady’s best interests or wellbeing. “It wasn’t fair of me to act as though I knew her whole life story based on what she looked like—or, more accurately, unfairly based on projecting my own weaknesses onto her.”
Ilmari said the last portion flatly, as though he were reporting an objective fact. Life in Destiny City was often weird. The sky right now was dark and gray, with the brownish tones that came from city lights hitting the dark of night. The new snow on the ground would likely come with ice, which in turn would pose a potential hazard to several of the pedestrians in town and if Baz ran afoul of said ice while on one of his morning runs—if he got himself injured and laid up, unable to jog or hit the gym for any length of time—then that would be Irreparably Terrible. Birds had to fly. Fish had to swim. Baz Lemarchand, otherwise known as the Negaverse’s Sailor Ilmari of Chastity, suffered from several appalling weaknesses—all of them obvious, in Baz’s mind, to everyone around him who had eyes and even most of the people who didn’t—and his lashing out at that civilian had come from his own failure to properly deal with said weaknesses.
With a shrug, he added, “Winter holidays are always terrible for me, really. Between the food itself and the social pressure to eat to excess? Eugh.” Ilmari shook his head and waved a hand dismissively, by way of emphasizing the point he thought he was talking around. Namely, that he’d let himself get fat since Gilbert and Jayce had become his housemates and vented his frustration over that state of affairs. As shown off by his fuku’s crop-top, Ilmari’s waist remained snatched and slender, but in his own mind, everyone else who saw him could tell that he’d spent the past several months making an absolute pig of himself and who knew if he would exercise enough self-control to just stop. “But really, just because those calorie-bomb holiday special hot chocolates are the last thing that I need in my life doesn’t mean that lady had to deprive herself.”
She should have done, if you asked him, but Ilmari’s motives for saying so still hadn’t been as pure as he’d wanted to believe.
genovianprince
Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 2:59 pm
Demeter truly had a bad habit of believing the best in people. Many times, it never worked out in her favor. But she always liked giving people the chance. After all, you never knew if you would know one of these people in your normal life. This time... It seemed like it was working out in her favor after all. Ilmari was apologizing and treating her decently, despite their crazy first encounter. She winced a little as she remembered beaning him in the head with a rock on accident.
"Don't be so hard on yourself," she said kindly. "But noted. Do not offer any of my usual baked goods to you."
Her mouth lifted in a half smile, a teasing smile, hoping it would at least make him feel a bit better. "That's why this time of year is my favorite. Less people comment on how much stuff I make and eat. Some people struggle to gain a healthy amount of weight—I'm lucky I get on a pretty even keel with my own habits, just kinda, barely, y'know? Anyway. Thank you, for the apology. I really appreciate it. And I hope in the future, the people around you are more understanding of you not wanting to break your diet. You deserve to get what you want out of life—you know, up until the point you're hurting people, but that's wayyy not the focus of this conversation."
She smiled more brightly at him, taking his hand again to squeeze it gently. "Stay safe from more snow monsters, 'kay? And..." She hesitated. "If I did run into you again... do you like, maybe banana nut muffins, or something that's not a triple chocolate nightmare?"
Ilmari nodded, listening to everything Demeter was telling him but……only partly digesting it. Which did put a twist of guilt in the pit of his chest, even if he didn’t feel very inclined to admit that to another living soul. She was trying very hard to be kind to him right now, to show understanding in the face of Baz apologizing to her, and he appreciated that? But the first words she told him—Don’t be so hard on yourself—hit Ilmari’s ears very oddly.
That…… Not being too hard on himself was how he’d wound up in his current position, though?
Not that he was allowing himself to put an exact number on things yet. He’d promised one of his secret side-account friends—Noreen, a longtime friend on those accounts, long enough that she was currently in a “recovery” cycle, for however long this one wound up lasting—that he wouldn’t put any exact numbers on anything until after New Year’s. Noreen had made several cogent points about how Baz didn’t always exercise good judgment when he got upset, and more than any other single outside stressor, putting exact numbers on anything about his body would upset him, deeply and faster than you could say “Superman.”
Still, it had been months since Baz had put an exact number on anything. Ever since Jayce had moved in, Baz had felt too wary of the Two Housemates of it all. Not secure enough in the idea that he’d really have time alone in which to perform his little self-assessment rituals. Any lapses in time like that couldn’t be good. They never went well for anybody, least of all Baz-Ilmari himself.
“……You’re very kind,” Ilmari said, tucking some stray hair behind his ear and feeling sort of lame for not having something better to say. But he didn’t think he could respond to most of what Demeter had said without quickly devolving into some secret side-account talk that he categorically did not need somehow finding its way back to Albite or his hus-boss-band. For all she came on sweet and innocent, maybe Demeter was secretly dating a Negaverse senshi who would hear her talking about this, recognize Ilmari as a (relatively) new recruit among Team Faustite, and would snitch on him for ??? some ******** reasons to be determined, okay, he didn’t rightly know, this was all extremely hypothetical. “And, uh……sure? Banana nut muffins would be okay?”
Ilmari would immediately foist them off on Litharge and Vesuvianite, but……Demeter didn’t need to know that.
