fandomtownies | Magic Box, Sunday, 04/03

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anders

Magic Box, Sunday, 04/03

Anders hadn't thought much about the changes going on around the island that weekend beyond being smugly grateful that all his parts had stayed in the right place, which was immediately followed by the worrying feeling that this had to mean his turn to be a girl again was coming up soon.

He spent his shift doing a bit of spring cleaning around the shop. Old books somehow managed to throw off an enormous amount of dust, and the herbs in the air didn't make it smell any better. On the bright side, Lachlan was turning into a champion dust-bunny hunter.

[OOC: Open shop, open post.]

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Ringo had been fortunate enough to miss out on this weekend's excitement herself. Not that you could exactly escape it in the dorms, but at least it hadn't affected her directly.

Which meant that she didn't abort her vague sort-of plan for the day in favor of hiding in her room.

You could learn a lot from the radio. Like the fact that Anders had a job, and that he tended to work on Sundays. Ringo was hoping he wasn't super-busy as she took a deep breath outside the door to the shop. She'd never been inside before. Not really her area of expertise, after all.

After taking that moment to collect herself, she opened the door and walked in, looking around curiously.

A small tuxedo cat chased a bit of fluff across the store's foyer and skittered behind a bookshelf, and Anders raised his head to see who had come in. He was pleased to see Ringo; they hadn't had a chance to talk since helping Alluka, and he'd meant to at least see how she was.

"Hello," he called, from a few shelves away. "Anything I can help you with, or are you just here to say hello?"

Awww, kitty! Ringo was distracted for a few moments before her eyes came up to Anders.

"Oh, um. Hey! I was just coming by to talk. Um, if you have time, I mean. I don't want to distract you or interrupt you!"

"Please, if anything you're saving me," Anders told her. "I'd rather talk to someone than finish dusting the shop. I'm all ears."

Ringo giggled. "Well, if you're sure."

Only now she had to actually talk. Awkward.

"It's not, um, like anything important? I just, you know." She caught herself and took a breath to refocus. "I guess I feel like I don't really know you all that well. And a lot of my friends do. So, um, I guess I thought we could just talk? If you don't mind?"

Edited 2016-04-03 19:58 (UTC)

"No, I don't mind at all," Anders said obligingly as he came to stand near Ringo. He'd had similar thoughts about her since they went to save Alluka; if anything, he appreciated her having done the awkward part.

"Anything particular you wanted to find out, or should I just start rambling? I don't mind either. I like rambling."

"Well, I've kind of gotten through all the bits I had sort of planned so far, so, um, rambling probably isn't a bad idea." She pursed her lips. "I mean, I guess I know you can, um, do magic?" Which was about as far as it went for Ringo's knowledge.

Anders normally had two conversational settings with people he regarded as equals: Sarcasm and Flirting. (Complaining about Injustice was the optional third setting.) None seemed exactly appropriate for Ringo.

"I do magic," he agreed finally. "I was born with it, I didn't fall into a puddle of radioactive goo or anything. My powers showed up when I was 12."

Edited 2016-04-03 20:32 (UTC)

Ringo's shoulders relaxed slightly, and she offered him a smile. He was making this easier than she'd been half-afraid he might. Not because she actually suspected Anders of being anything but a nice guy (look at all the people she liked who liked him!), but, well, they weren't talking about AirTrek, and that made things trickier for her.

"So you didn't know before that?" she asked, head tilting in curiosity. "That kind of sounds like a, um, big deal to suddenly have sprung on you."

AirTrek was one of the few things Anders wouldn't venture to offer an opinion on, so they'd have to try to muddle through the conversation without it.

"Mmm. No. Wasn't much fun," he agreed, flexing his hands in a tiny sign of anxiety. "Well, the actual magic part was fun -- you're shooting fire out of your hands -- but the part where they tell you you're a freak and haul you off to a Circle of Mages I could have done without."

"A freak?" Ringo was frowning slightly at the term. "Huh. I guess I would have thought that magic wasn't super-uncommon where you're from or anything. I mean, I guess maybe there are only, like, two or three people who can use it? But I'd been thinking more like, you know, thousands or millions or something."

Anders wasn't following her logic.

"It's freakish because it's seen as a curse, not because it's so terribly unusual," he said carefully. "Maybe one person in a hundred can use magic. The last count on Circle mages I heard was around 50,000, and that's not the whole world."

"Oh." Ringo considered that. "That sounds kinda, like, extra sucky. I mean, it just happened to you, and people think it's a really bad thing?"

That brought her to a thought. "Um? Is it? A bad thing, I mean? Or, you know, a curse?" They didn't have magic back home, so she'd never thought of it as anything other than pretty cool.

"No, Ringo," Anders sighed. "It's not a curse."

He had to remember her questions came from ignorance, not malice, but his voice still took on an impatient edge.

"Some people don't understand it, so they're afraid. And lucky me, they're in charge back home."

Ringo looked suddenly worried at that sigh. "Oh. I didn't mean to say that it should be or anything," she said way too quickly.

"Is that why you came here?" she asked, hoping to steer the conversation onto a less fraught topic. Not that she had much skill at that, either. "To, you know, get away from the people who don't understand?"

"More or less," Anders told her. "I ran away. How'd you end up here?"

It seemed like time for a change of topic to him, too.

"I guess I wanted to start over?" Ringo shrugged. "It's not like life back home was terrible or anything, but there were a lot of, um, expectations? And they meant that I never got to really know what it was like to be a normal girl."

Her lips curled upward. "Though I suppose that coming to Fandom in an attempt to live something like a normal life may sound kind of silly." Though it wasn't a decision she regretted in the least.

"We didn't know what we were getting into," Anders shrugged. "But if we had, no one would come."

He nodded attentively at the story.

"I see why you wanted a change," he said, "but whydidn't you get to be normal? Was it just the AirTrek?" It didn't seem like skating should be enough to keep someone apart like that, but he could tell AirTrek was more than just skating to her.

"I don't know. I might have." Ringo grinned, then sobered slightly. "Though maybe not if they'd mentioned the risk of things like this weekend." She wasn't really comfortable with the idea of waking up in some other body.

She sighed. "And not really because of AirTrek exactly?" Though sort of? "I sort of, um, inherited leadership of an AT group called Sleeping Forest when I was about eleven or so I guess? And that came with a lot of responsibility. Sleeping Forest was responsible for protecting this really dangerous piece of technology for, well, since ATs were invented, I guess."

Another sigh. "It involved a lot of fighting." A lot. "And I became a person that I didn't like very much just to do my job."

"At least this weekend the girls got to keep their minds," Anders volunteered. "The ones I hate are where you think you're someone else."

He chewed his nails while Ringo explained Sleeping Forest. "That sounds like a lot to drop on a kid," he said. "No wonder you got overwhelmed. There's no way to step down besides coming here?"

"That happens?" Ringo suddenly looked worried. She hadn't seen it yet, but that sounded awful.

"And I could have stepped down and stayed home, I suppose, but, well, people would remember, you know? The old me. The one who crushed other teams, put people in the hospital. I don't think that's something you forget just because someone retires." She sounded a bit uncomfortable as she spoke about it, as if the memories weren't exactly pleasant.

"I thought I was a king once and a wizard another time," Anders nodded, shiver going down his spine. "It happens."

He looked over at her, picking up on the discomfort in her tone. "Wait, why were people in the hospital? Fights during ... games or matches or whatever you call them?"

"Not, not exactly?" Ringo twisted her hands together nervously for a moment. "It was a lot more like a war. I mean, maybe that's putting it too strongly, since almost no one actually got killed." She took a breath to steady herself. "But I hurt a lot of people really seriously, and a lot of others were hurt on my orders."

"There was, well, a lot at stake."

"Must have been," Anders agreed, eyebrow shooting up. Lachlan came over to say hello, and he scooped the cat into his arms. "What were you fighting over to start with?"

Ringo shifted very slightly, wiggling her fingers at the kitty with a soft smile.

"I know it's going to sound kind of melodramatic, but potentially the fate of the world. Basically, the people who first invented all the technology behind AirTrek also produced something called the 'Sky Regalia'. And whoever unlocked the Sky Regalia would basically have control over all advanced technology on the planet. It was my job, well, Sleeping Forest's job, to make sure no one ever did."

Lachlan mrowled at Ringo, stretching his neck to encourage petting.

"And they gave that job to an 11-year-old," Anders repeated. "No offense, but that's a little insane."

Ringo reached out, movements a little hesitant, and lightly brushed her fingertips along Lachlan's head. She hadn't had a lot of interaction with pets back home, so she was always extra careful around them.

"I had the skills." She sighed. "So when my sister had to retire, I took her place." A little shrug. "I don't know if it really was the best way to solve things, but it did end up working out in the end." They saved the world and all.

Even if that had mostly been Ikki's doing rather than her own.

"At least there's that," Anders said, also a bit awkwardly. He smiled at Ringo's fingers on the cat's head. "Go ahead. Lachlan's not the least bit shy."

Slowly increasing the pressure of her nails against Lachlan's scalp, hoping she was interpreting his body language correctly as he moved under her fingers.

After a moment, Ringo glanced back over to Anders. "What's it like? Magic, I mean? We don't really have it back home, so I don't really know anything about it." She was pretty sure it wasn't like she saw in TV shows, though.

"Ask a dozen people who use magic that, and you're going to get a dozen answers," Anders told her. "For me, I'm taking energy that's already out there in the Fade -- the spirit realm -- and putting it to work. It's powerful. You can use it to heal or to destroy."

"Do people, um, specialize? Like, back home, different people get good at different ways of using AirTrek." She was kind of hoping it was similar. That'd give her something to grasp onto mentally.

"Of course," Anders told her. "We all know the same basic spells, but you can't get good at everything. I'm a healer. Other people are better fighters. Somebody else might be able to turn into an animal, but that one's rare."

Ringo smiled slightly. "That sounds kinda cool. Being able to heal people, I mean. That's, uh, not really something I can do." So she it made her a little bit jealous.

"I mean, you did a really good job on me, and you'd just been in a fight."

"I can't push open a four-ton door," Anders shrugged. "We all have our weaknesses."

He flashed a genuine smile at her. "But thanks. That wasn't a good day, but I was happy I could at least help a little."

"Not my favorite day, either, yeah." Ringo sighed.

"Anyway, it sounds like you can't really teach someone magic? Or, I mean, not unless they already have it? Like, you have to just get it like you did and you have learn it?"

"Not my kind of magic you can't," Anders said, shaking his head. "When you're learning, you aren't really learning. Not the way you learn to read. It's more like learning a sport. You're finding safer and faster ways to do something your body already knows how to do."

"Except that not everyone's body knows how to do it?" Ringo thought she understood.

"Um, and for people who can do it, are there different, like, I don't know, natural abilities? Like, how some people are taller or shorter, or lighter or heavier and that can affect them in sports?" There was a lot of that sort of thing in the AirTrek world.

"I suppose?" Anders said, wrinkling his nose. "I don't know how much of it is interest or personality or any of that, and how much is physical. But it would make sense, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah." Ringo nodded. "So maybe it's not so different than AirTrek in some ways." Or lots of things, really, even if Ringo mostly just thought about the one. "Though I guess we mostly get to choose to do it or not. And some people don't like AT riders, but it's not like they call us cursed or freaks or anything."

"Why don't they like you?" Anders wondered, curious. "If it's so important to your whole world I think they'd be grateful someone does it."

"Well, the technology is important, but a lot of people would say that if those researchers hadn't created the Sky Regalia in the first place, there wouldn't be a need for AT teams to fight over it."

She snorted. "But more than that, I think most people just don't like a bunch of young brats running all over town yelling and having fun. Being delinquents, you know?"

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Magic Box, Sunday, 04/03

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