fandomtownies | The Boards, Saturday, All Day

Lizzie was mostly awake. You know. She'd found the pot of coffee in the kitchen mostly by smell, and had poured herself a big cup. Once that had gone down, she'd felt vaguely human, and capable of such Herculean tasks as putting clothes on her body and noticing that her new roommate was not actually in the apartment.

She needed another cup to face the prospect of stairs without falling and breaking her neck, but luckily, there was plenty. As she got closer to the manager's office, she could heard music, and started bobbing her head along in appreciation.

"I really wouldn't have pegged you as a grunge fan," Lizzie said, ambling into his office and stifling a yawn. "Not that I'm not appreciative. I was worried it'd --"

Whatever she had been worried about was going to have to wait, because that was when Lizzie tripped over her own stupid feet and stubbed her toe right on the edge of the chair. Thus spilling some of the scalding hot coffee onto her hand.

"Dammit!" she shouted, jumping in a way that ensured more of the coffee was going all over herself. "Ow ow ow, fffffffu--"

And that's when a bolt of lightning shot straight out of her hands.

"Shit!"

That was for Lizzie's sake, for the way he watched her stub her toe and for the spilling coffee, and Jonothon readied himself to get up, reach for some paper towel, and help her with that.

"SHIT."

That was in response to the startled cat scrabbling out of Jonothon's lap, claws digging for purchase in whatever solid chunk of meat they could reach. It was a less than pleasant experience.

"Fuck."

And that was Jonothon's reaction to the lightning hitting the outlet that his computer was plugged into, and the power surge that blew the speakers and left the screen black.

He looked at her warily, pulling himself to his feet and holding up his hands, ignoring the bleeding cat scratches on his legs and the dead computer, and taking a deep breath. He was going to go out on a limb and guess that this wasn't something she tended to do often.

"Are you alright, luv?"

"I -- I -- I just --"

Her hand hurt, her toe hurt, oh, and the rest of her foot, because she'd dropped the coffee. And Jono's computer was smoking and he was bleeding and she had just shot lightning out of --

The clawing panic made her jump, which sent another bolt out. Smaller, this time, like an aftershock. And another after it.

Realizing that she was, in fact, sending electricity out of her actual fucking fingers was what made Lizzie start screaming.

This was going to be a thing, wasn't it? Any time somebody manifested powers by firing lightning out of their bloody hands, Jonothon was going to be there to witness it?

On the upside, at least there weren't any trolls around.

"Lizzie." He kept his voice calm but stern, watching Joni scrabble out through the office door to go hide in amongst the theatre seating as the screaming panic continued. "Lizzie."

A deep breath.

"Elizabeth Bennet, stop screaming, take a seat, and breathe."

That, at least, got her attention, and not just because nobody called her Elizabeth any more except her mother.

"I am shooting lightning bolts out of my fingers!" she screeched back. "I don't know how to stop it! Stop yelling at me because it ISN'T HELPING!"

Technically, it was. Those were actual words. But logic was not going to come back online for a couple of minutes, minimum, and she needed to scream at someone.

Jono took that screaming with the sort of grace and aplomb that one might expect of a man who was bleeding in a few choice places from the belt down, while his new employee fired electric charges at him.

He scowled, walked around the desk, grabbed the chair that she'd stubbed her toe on, turned it around, and pointed at it.

"Sit," he said, raising an eyebrow at her, "the hell down. You're hardly the first person to suddenly find yourself with powers around here, you'll probably not be the last, and I swear it'll be coming out of your pay if you fry my coffee perk next."

Priorities.

"I didn't mean to fry anything," Lizzie snapped, but there wasn't any screaming this time. She was still too shaken up to be able to calm down just yet, but she was at least deferring to the Authority Figure tone and dropping into the chair. "I don't have powers and I don't know what's going on a-a-and --"

Her entire body was visibly shaking, and little zaps were still issuing out from her fingers at random bursts. But she was sitting.

"-- so help me I'm aiming at the coffee next."

Lizzie Bennet: super mature.

Edited 2012-11-17 21:57 (UTC)

"You won't do that, because if you do, I'll be bringing mine down from the kitchen upstairs and declaring it off-limits," Jono informed her, calmly. "Coffee is for big girls. Now, shut your eyes. Don't look at your hands. Panicking is only going to make it worse, trust me."

The good news was, Lizzie closed her eyes. The bad news was that she was still railing at Jono, since -- this was his fault. For -- being there when it happened?

"Okay, A, you are really being a jerk right now. B? You take the coffee and I will burn this building down. And C, not looking at them is not going to stop them. I doubt my insane magical superpowers are fueled by me noticing that they are there. The ostrich theory is not going to take away the fact that I have turned static electricity into something that probably just destroyed your computer."

She took a deep breath but wasn't ready to be done yet.

"Exactly how many people do you know with psychic superpowers, anyway? Because plenty of people claim to have them but oddly enough, no one has ever taken that guy up on his million-dollar challenge. You know? The skeptic guy?"

Although her misaimed temper was possibly not entirely bad news, as the sparkings did seem to be decreasing.

For what it was worth, Jono actually took a moment to take a quick tally. Two Emmas, two Jeans, Dinah, Karla, Sookie, the Professor...

"At least ten," he settled on, easily enough. "And 'psionic' is a more accurate term. I should know, I used to be one. And on fire. Now, are you going to breathe and let me help you get this under control, or am I packing up my coffee and my cat and going back upstairs while you sort it out yourself?"

"Then you and your friends really ought to cash in on that," she said, trying to make it sound like she thought he was lying. Trying to believe that he was somehow lying. Cleopatra, Queen of De Nile.

"... al ... though, if ... you had to prove to some scientist guy that ... you could do things, I mean ... maybe some people don't because they just ... don't want to be put under a microscope like that."

Hi, I'm a human with provably psychic/psionic/psywhateverthehellic powers! Please tell the government about me as quickly as possible; oh, and I'd like to be ostracized from my friends and family, too.

Damn logic, interrupting her rage.

The rest of what he said caught up to her as she was reasoning out the weight of a million dollars against a life of being eyed like a science experiment.

"Oh, no, Joni," Lizzie breathed. "I didn't hit her, did I? Is she okay? Did she --"

Yeah okay, that was starting the panic, which was, in turn, sending off some more of that tingling feeling she got when her hands were playing Storm Generator. She wasn't looking, but she could tell anyway.

Deep breaths.

Jonothon sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and taking deep breaths of his own. His attitude wasn't helping here. Right. Okay. He'd calm down, and talk to her patiently.

"Joni's fine," he assured her, "you just startled her. Any cat that can dig claws in as deeply as she did before taking off for the safety of the seating has got to be okay. I'm more concerned about you, right now. This is obviously not something you deal with often, is it?"

"You ... you're asking if I've ever channeled electricity through my hands before?" Lizzie asked, barely refraining from adding a Seriously? at the end.

Because yes, he was. He, uh, knew people with superpowers. That was real. Ad totally a normal thing around here. It was a perfectly legitimate question to him. She might just -- send off sparks every time she had PMS or something.

The Menstrual Electrocuter.

Focus, Lizzie.

"Er, no, it's not," she added, in a softer tone. "Are you ... sure this isn't some kind of bizarre static electricity caused by really thick carpeting?"

... no? Okay. Just had to rule that out. Maybe he and all his friends lived on shag carpeting and liked to rub their feet on it for luck.

"This is really happening, isn't it," she said. It wasn't quite a question.

"It's really happening," Jonothon agreed, keeping his voice calm, as reassuring as he could manage. "And if this isn't something that typically happens where you're from, there's at least a slim chance that this is some sort of ... Fandom... thing."

Still, temporary or not, he'd like to at least talk her to that point where she wasn't going to have to worry about frying any more of his electronics.

Or him.

"But like I said, luv, I've got at least some passing experience with this sort of thing. I spent years making a point to not raze every person and building in my vicinity to the ground, you know. A few sparks ought to be easy enough."

"You ... you're a ..." She couldn't think of the word right now, and getting agitated wouldn't help. "One of those people who starts fires using their mind? Like that movie with Drew Barrymore."

She couldn't picture her roommate glaring at things and watching them burn to a crisp. Then again, all she knew about him was that he was British, a theater manager, had a cat, and was either addicted to stage make-up or really into body modification.

.... oh.

"Is, um, is this why you're blue?" she asked. Please let that not be a rude question ...

That silence from Jonothon there... was mostly the result of him trying to come up with a way to answer that.

"At least partly," he settled on, frowning. If it hadn't been for his mutation, he wouldn't have been in a situation where Akkaba grabbing him would have been so easy, after all. "The blue is a long story, but I suppose it all goes back to that. Here, don't think about the electricity for a bit. Tell me about your favourite movie, Lizzie."

Take her mind off of the madness completely. Get her thinking about something that wasn't sparks and flames. Maybe that would help, some.

"Anything with Colin Firth," Lizzie said automatically. "Like that one where Renee Zelleweger was Hollywood-fat? Brenda Johnson's Journal? Oh, man, can you imagine how amazing it would be, having Colin Firth and Hugh Grant punching each other out for you? ... Um. Probably not. Unless you're gay. Which ... is totally cool, by the way. But otherwise, the impact of that is probably lost on you a bit. Um, and, he was also really great in The Consequences of Being Frank. Everybody else says they like the earlier movie version better but I think I'm biased?"

She had a weak spot for that man. Could not explain it. ~~Because the writers enjoy meta.~~

Edited 2012-11-17 23:30 (UTC)

"You might be biased," Jono replied, sitting on the edge of his desk and smirking faintly. "But then, I haven't seen either, I've only just read the script. I really ought to, I suppose, since we're scheduled to put on a production of Being Frank in the spring."

Distractions were fantastic, weren't they? Jono glanced around the room for a moment before speaking up again.

"Do you like tea, Lizzie? I could get you some, that might help your nerves."

"Oh, I love tea," she said, sighing. "Jane always makes it for me when I'm feeling down."

Thinking of Jane gave her warm, fuzzy feelings. Thinking of having to tell Jane about this ... didn't.

Okay. Jane would understand. That was practically Jane's hobby: being understanding, and being amazing about it.

"You've ... never seen it?" Lizzie asked. "We should marathon both of them. Call it official theater business. Take notes about staging. I love the way Oscar Wilde does farce. The characters are light but you can laugh with them, not at them."

Plus, Colin Firth and Rupert Everett in really dapper suits.

Since Jono was fairly certain Lizzie's eyes were still closed, he gave a little hum, forming a hard-light construct of himself to go and put the water on by the concession area for tea.

"I think that would be excellent research for the next season," he mused, making a note to get his hands on a copy of the DVD at some point. "Watch some videos, take some notes. We could probably get a lot of costuming directly from the films, or at least as close as we can throw together from the costume racks..."

"It might be on Netflix," Lizzie mused. "Or Hulu. I bet I'd be able to find them online."

If all else failed, there was probably a torrent.

"There's a song in the Colin Firth version, so you might want to see if your leads can sing," she added. "Or you can cut it out. We could change the locations mentioned so no one has to try to put on a British accent, or we could just assume suspension of disbelief."

Bad British accents tended to be horrible. She had to assume he'd agree with her on that point.

Jono was going to... not point out that they weren't going to be looking up anything online on his computer any time soon. Now seemed like a bad time for that.

"America," he said, almost immediately. "This will take place in America, because if I have to hear one more bad Dick Van Dyke accent around here, I'll scream."

You wouldn't want Jono to scream.

"We could drop the accents entirely and hope no one catches on," Lizzie suggested. "I meant, Kevin Costner spent a whole movie in England being a folk hero and never bothered to have an accent. Even despite the rest of the cast."

People were willing to swallow all kinds of things if your movie was exciting enough.

"If it's in the US, I assume we change London to New York?" she said. "Maybe the second setting is an unspecified place upstate."

She took another deep breath -- she was steadier, now -- and said, "I, uh, I'm sorry I was all ..."

Screaming at him? Electrocuting his possessions? Being a brat?

"... earlier."

He could fill in the blank! It was a fun game.

Edited 2012-11-18 01:01 (UTC)

Jono decided, now that she was back to talking about the issue at hand, that it would be okay to table the problem of setting until closer to the actual preparations that they'd be going through for the show.

"You were frightened," he noted logically, keeping his voice calm. "This isn't something that's normal for you, and whether it's just something the island is throwing at you for a few days, or it's permanent, it's still terrifying when it first happens to somebody. I didn't deal half as well as you are when I first manifested my flames."

... This possibly had something to do with the way he'd blown half his body off and left his girlfriend at the time in a wheelchair. But he wasn't going to volunteer that information at the moment, no.

"I'm not actually dealing," Lizzie admitted, almost cheerfully. "I'm sitting here trying to pretend it's not going on. I expect I'll have some kind of a freak-out later, but right now, we're on the freeway straight into Denial City."

The body was really awesome at helping people absorb shock like that.

"Does ... does that really happen, like, I get something like this for a weekend? So it might not be ... it might just go away again?"

Please. She'd like to shower again one day.

"It might," Jono confirmed. "Might. If this is something the island did, then it could very well wear off in a few days. If it isn't... we'll deal with that when we get there."

A pause.

"I suppose I should have been more up-front with you about some of the island's eccentricities."

No kidding, Jon.

"That ... people here can shoot lightning and set things on fire?" Lizzie said, a touch uncertainly. "I wouldn't have believe you. I almost don't believe you now."

And, well, look at the evidence.

"And if I had believed you, I ... wouldn't have stayed," she added, in a low voice. "I ... I think I would have been too scared."

Not just of the island, either. She dropped her eyes to the floor and hoped he wasn't going to hate her for that admission. She couldn't exactly blame him if he did.

It made his guts twist a little to hear that, but Jonothon just nodded, watching her thoughtfully while he absorbed that.

Had he been in her shoes, he probably would have been afraid, too.

"It's frightening," he admitted. "Especially when it's something you never would have thought possible, I can imagine. Still, if you had left, chances are you wouldn't be dealing with this right now."

He sighed, glancing toward the office door and hesitating to let his hard-light construct bring the tea in just yet.

"Would you like help learning how to hold it back?"

"I'm sorry," she said, quickly, loathing the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. "Look, if you don't want me to stay here anymore, I -- I wouldn't even blame you."

She liked to think she was open-minded, and she'd just told her she-didn't-even-know-the-right-term roommate that he would have scared her off before today. Very classy, Lizzie.

"So -- wait, I only got this because I'm here?" she asked. "Is that just -- if it's temporary, or even if it's permanent? Is this place radioactive o-or ..."

"An apology is more than I'm used to," Jono replied softly. "Stay. We'll get you through this, and you can decide what you're going to do from there, if you think this is all too much."

If the island was too much. If he was too much. He wouldn't blame her either way.

"Not radioactive." He shook his head a little. "Just... strange. I could write down a list of odd things that the island does from time to time. I still don't think you'd believe me until half of it happens. And it's usually temporary. I haven't seen a bout of Fandom Strangeness yet that's lasted."

Even if they had to beat it away themselves.

"No," she said quickly. "It's not too much. I mean, if I grow three heads and they start fighting with me, maybe, but it's not -- it wouldn't be because of you."

That was important, so that went first.

"You're still the same person you were yesterday, and so am I, I just -- would have been stupid about it yesterday. And if this stays, I need -- help, if you're willing, and -- and if it doesn't, I'm not going to be -- scared just because I got luckier than you did."

He was right, that she wouldn't believe him about the rest of this. It was too fresh, too new.

"I keep wanting to make it a story," Lizzie said. "It makes an awesome narrative concept, that the island is kind of sentient and does its own thing. It'd make for a great vlog project idea. I don't -- I can't think about it like a normal person, I keep thinking of it like it's a story."

"Maybe thinking of it like it's a story will make some of it easier," Jonothon offered. "If it becomes a narrative, you can... stand outside of it, some, and look in. It's easier to be reasonable about something that's unreasonable if you get to pretend that it isn't touching you, specifically."

"It's more easy to control," Lizzie agreed. "Stories have authors. Events don't just happen all slapdash; there's a reason behind it. Everything makes sense by the end, unless it's something Dada-ist. It's the instinctive need to know that the universe has rules to it, maybe."

Communications major. She could talk about narrative forms all day.

"But this is real life," she said, "and things don't get to be that easy, right? Okay. How do you -- I mean, how do you know I can control it?"

She was calmer now, and not firing off. That didn't mean the sparks wouldn't come back the first time something upset her. Dammit.

"Remind me to show you a picture of what I looked like back in high school. If I could control that, this should be a walk in the park for you," Jono replied, offering her a wry smile. "Close your eyes again, luv. Let's see what we can do for you for now."

"Oh ... kay," Lizzie said, reluctantly. It wasn't that she didn't trust him; it was that she was scared of seeing just how volatile whatever-the-hell-this-was was.

"Eyes closed," she said, unnecessarily. "I don't -- know that I know how it works, to even try using it on purpose. Should I be doing something?"

Lizzie didn't idle well.

"You should be keeping your eyes closed and listening to what I say," Jonothon informed her. "If this works, you'll be able to reel it in if you end up sparking again. Back in high school, when I was on fire, the power was a constant for me... a sort of twisting, a hum deep in my chest that constantly reminded me it was there. Can you feel something like that, Lizzie? A sort of... core of power to pull the energy back to?"

Best to make certain there was something there that they could both relate to.

Lizzie was inhaling, exhaling, and keeping her eyes closed.

Logic said this power didn't start the very second she had stubbed her toe. It was too coincidental. So maybe she'd had it this morning and had been controlling it just fine, in the background, until stubbing her toe had thrown her concentration.

Thinking that gave her inspiration. If she could do it that easily, then it would only take a little more effort to do it consciously, even when other things went wrong.

Right? Maybe?

"Okay," she said. "I can ... if I focus? I can kind of feel -- deep down, there's this sort of ... core."

Er.

"That almost sounds dirty," she apologized.

Jonothon couldn't help but snort a little at that. If that's what she needed to cling to in order to keep from losing her mind through this, the all power to her.

"Right. Good. Now... I want you to take a slow, deep breath. Focus on it. Pay attention to how it feels as you pull that breath in. Do it a few times. Just breathe, and really get to know what breathing is."

Which sounded ridiculous, but it was important, blast it.

The Boards, Saturday, All Day

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