(#001) Vita: Wake up without an hangover (Odds: Average) [38] <Fail>
Uh.
Her head hurt like hell.
Her clothes were drenched in alcohol.
Was she always this bad with drinking? Or was it just the bitter fun of drinking with someone? And Vita thought she could handle her alcohol. Turns out trying to open a beer with one hand eventually fails after enough rounds.
Her pain only made her consider her strange situation in an even worse light. Frice was already an intimidating figure by herself but everything about Ami felt like a red flag. She knew all that drinking would soon get her in trouble… she just didn’t expect to take the form of waking up in a derelict warehouse to the sounds of arguing the room next over. . . what were they going on about anyway, her head felt like she was about to explode!
In the next room, Frice was questioning her choices just as deeply. “Let’s try this again.” She spoke slowly, holding back far more than the words that left her lips. “What do you mean you ‘can’t’?”
“Sounds pretty obvious, no? I cannot do that stuff again. At least… not so quickly.” Holding up her hands, a great and annoying array of fireworks blast off from her palm, leaving nothing behind except a stronger headache for Frice’s head to deal with. “Who ever heard about waking up groggy after 2000 years of sleep?” All the cool tricks Ami had done so far had a limit. A limit she had reached far quicker than it could be replenished. Whatever power she might have had one time was now dimmed to a fraction. “Maybe it was that spear business… nah, I would have figured out at the time if that was it. Guess I’m just a little rus-”
A hand reaches up to grab Ami’s collar, pulling her in a rather rough manner, breaking her train of thought. “You better. I put a lot of risk by joining this stupid idea of yours!” After a few seconds of heavy breathing Frice lets go of Ami’s clothes and even straightens her collar slightly, before making her way to the doorway. “I’m going to get some fresh air, I’ll be back.”
“ - And I thought a spear to the back hurt, heh.”
Ami barely had a chance to breath a sigh of relief before someone else walked into the room. Leadership was hard.
“What’s going on here, what happened?” Vita walks in rather sheepishly, still holding her head up with her one good (and bad, really) arm. She was looking a bit less pale by now, finally gathering enough balance to stand upright against the doorway. She drank just enough that it was almost like she planned on never waking up again.
“Mhh? Oh… nothing much. Just some power issues, happens to everyone you know.”
“Power issues? Wait, you call them ‘powers’?” Was that really worth focusing on right now? It was like she was just asking for headaches at this point, hangover or not.
“Eh, it works. Guess I ran out of juice a bit earlier than expected.” She shrugs, that little casual action she likes to do when trying to make things feel small. Except, it never really worked. It never worked when she could do things and now that she couldn’t… well, it was more annoying than anything else.
“So. Let me see if I get this straight. There are people out there stronger than you.” Pulling her hand off her head, she starts counting her issues on her fingers, as if that helped weight her options.
Nods.
“And you’re useless now. I can still just leave, right?” Alright, two fingers was far from a deep and analytic approach to the subject but Vita felt she had seen too much already.
“Oh, come on, don’t be like that. It’s a slow day after all, we’re just going to check out the place from the outside. Don’t tell me you’re scared of going back to some painful place~.”
“I’m scared of landing in prison from following someone incompetent.” Still, if it was just retcon, it wasn’t like she could go to jail for that… hopefully.
“You mean like your old job?” Okay, that did earn Ami a little poke from Vita. Clearly she probably should avoid pushing it like that.
“You’re really helpless without your powers, aren’t you?”
Well, she wasn’t THAT helpless! “Look, it’s not like that, I’m not like some squishy human now or anything like that. I can still do stuff just… well, I need some rest that’s all.”
Ami: Void Abilities
- A lack of impact has diminished her abilities to a minimum.
- Mechanic: Void points. Ami is able to sucess at tasks using this currency, the price equal to the number of ranks above Average squared (min 1).
- She recovers 1 point each day. Starts at 0 with a max of 30.
- Both recovery and max expand as she gains fame/infamy and control over territory.
“So all that fancy stuff you did yesterday as drained you dry?”
“Pretty much.” That serious look with the big smiled really bugged Vita the most.
“You know that’s extremely irresponsible, right?”
“Ugh, I just woke up, give me a second please…” And just like that she’s back to being half asleep with barely any balance holding her up. Truly a clown show.
Vita steps outside before Ami recovers from her sleep fake out and makes her way next to Frice, keeping her gaze forward while watching the smoke fading into nothing. “Drinking and smoking, no wonder witches don’t live that long.”
“Getting cold feet, I imagine?” She throws away the butt of her cigarette and pulls another one. Snapping her fingers, a quiet flame appears trapped between them, just enough to light it up. How many had she smoked today…?
“Aren’t you?” Didn’t sound fair to give that kind of question given Frice’s own attitude.
“This never really felt like a serious thing anyway, I suppose. Opportunities like this don’t just drop at one’s feet without a price too great attached to it. Or go nowhere at all.”
Talk about being way too open and too closed at the same time. Vita was starting to see why Ami went to her first. “Right. You seem to have a lot going.” How the hell does anyone reply to that anyway? Witches… what little Vita had heard about them was clearly an understatement. Then again, maybe she was just weird like that.
Alright. Let’s try it out! Vita was practically twisting herself here to figure out if she should stay or leave. Neither option looked appealing and Ami’s broken powers (not the good kind) were not helping her mood. But she did remember something.
“You’re a seer right? Guess.” Okay. One hand. She can’t do the trick she wanted. Shame. But she’s not just looking for an easy guess here, she’s got something on her hand and it’s up to Frice to figure it out. Of course… Vita isn’t the only one with an hangover, after all, so if this fails now it might just shatter the whole organization before it begins.
(#002) Frice: Guess what’s in her hand. (Seer: Low vs Miniscule) [53] <Pass>
- Extremely simple challenge with an obvious answer and no chance involved.
"I don't know." She finally said with a sigh, watching Vita throw the small item on the floor. A slightly bent cap from one of the beers. Unlikely she carried it the whole time for this test, probably something she just felt in her pocket moments ago.
"I knew it! You're a fraud, this entire thing is nothing but a madhouse and I hope I never see your face again EVER." Vita stomps away, decided beyond reason to never look back and figure out something for herself.
Visions never got easier. A certain brutish attitude was necessary to get a good reaction and actually learn something from the experience. Vita would never know. Her short fuse made her the perfect target for Frice’s type of future sight, in fact.
Frice figured Vita was on the edge of the cliff when it came to her investment in this project. Maybe the better thing would be to lie and to let her leave on her own terms. She had resigned herself to this fate, after all, was it fair to drag someone else along? Someone innocent, that is.
Still, she made her choice. With a sigh, Frice throws away her last cigarette for the day and face Vita directly. “It’s a slightly bent beer cap, Barkjaw. Since you didn’t like the one you tried last night I’m guessing you didn’t bring it on purpose and simply found it in your pocket, deciding to put on a test for the sake of finding one branch to cling on instead of going back to your empty life. Am I wrong?” A bit too much but maybe it would put some sense into her head.
“I didn’t ask for a therapist assessment.” She opens her hand and lets the cap fall on the ground. “Lucky guess.” And yet she’s still here.
“That’s the spirit!” The two girls are brought together as Ami appears out of nowhere, arms around their necks.
“Where the FUCK did you come from!” Vita was still not used to it. Especially since… wait, how DID she do that then?
“Okay, so I still have some powers. Somethings are free, you know? Like moving from inside out here, since there’s no ‘hostile’ figures. Stuff like that.”
“So… it works if it’s meaningless?” Already Vita was trying to crack it like it was a puzzle. Who knows how the rules worked. Narrative weight wasn’t exactly observable within the story itself. “My head hurts…”
Either way, it seemed like it was settled! Next stop… the park next to Nexacor Dynamics. It was an open public space, after all, so a lot could be deduced from just the outside. It was best to take things slowly after all.