[open] Oh the weather outside is weather

[wannasmash]

Who: Izuku "DEKU DON'T" Midoriya and YOU. Featuring a Warmblood who will, per this month's effects, influence you to be your best self... whatever that may mean.
What: Catchall log with: a snowball fight, fishing Paul out of a collapsed basement, giving mushrooms to Illarion, event things. Event plotting comment.
When: January
Where: A park. Abandoned basement. The Red.

Content Warnings: fantasy violence against a snake-shaped rock monster, panic attack, teens in danger. Mention of: being kidnapped, child abuse and/or neglect. More TBD in comments below.

Open prompts:
Snowball Fight!
Wallflower Time (Snake Den at The Red) (Event)
Taking Note (Snake Den at The Red) (Event)

Comments

OTA

[onekindsoul]

Ruby Rose wasn't about to miss this little brawl. She's quick to dart around from one mound of snow to the next to take cover as she packs up another snowball to throw. Once she's got loaded up she'll catch sight of a snow man and make a break for it, leaping up and perching on it's head as she lines up her shot like a true sniper.

"Hey! Think fast!" And she throws her snowball at her current target- Except that's not all she leaps off snow man to tackle them to the ground too.

Sorry. Ruby takes these very seriously.

[forwantofahorse]

Sayo had been taking a pleasant walk through the neighborhood, getting to know Trench, seeing the sights, marking down the least monster-y routes in her notebook. Normal first few days in the city kind of things.

And then she got beaned on the back of the head with a snowball, and oh, it was on.

As Ruby leaps through the air to give Sayo a friendly tackle, she bites down on her tongue hard enough to draw blood—a task that's made easier by her snaggletooth. When she swallows the fine mist of darkblood, time... stops.

Sayo steps back from her physical body, tapping her chin as she examines her surroundings. Languidly, she walks forward, retrieves a tape measure from out of nowhere, and measures the exact distance between Ruby and the ground. She nods, experimentally scuffs the snow drift with her foot, then sits down in a convenient tea chair before an odd-looking chess set, making a few adjustments to the pieces.

Then, she snaps her fingers, and time continues flowing again as she watches her physical body spring into action.

Sayo turns on a dime and sweeps her foot through the snow, creating a small cloud of snow to obscure her location for a few precious seconds before Ruby touches down and thrusts her hands toward Ruby, summoning a shimmering crimson barrier that doesn't entirely stop her midair charge, but slows it enough for her to scramble away and out of her sight. When her opponent finally hits the ground, Sayo is gone... and behind Ruby, having shoulder-rolled through the snow desperately tripped over herself to get out of the way, snatched the head of the snowman, and poised herself to dunk it directly onto Ruby's skull.

Meanwhile, still observing, Sayo sips a cup of tea and smiles faintly. "Your move, Ruby," she says, even though Ruby can't actually hear her from where she is.

[onekindsoul]

Ruby wasn't quite sure what she had expected when she made her leap. The sudden turn was not on that list- Between the snow and the sudden feeling that she was falling a touch slower than before are her only hints that something is going on. But this was a game and she wasn't about to pull out her gun to start trying to counter this with high recoil and momentum.

She lands on the ground and looks up with no sign of Shannon in sight. But she hears the crunch of snow behind her and there's a brief moment where Ruby just becomes a flurry of snow and ice in the vague shape of rose petals and bursts forward in a blast of speed before reforming into herself in a haphazard roll on the ground. She recovers and quickly turns to face Shannon as the snowman hits the ground where she was just a moment ago.

[forwantofahorse]

"Short-range teleportation... no, it isn't instantaneous. Which means there has to be some delay before and after she dashes like that," Sayo muses from the comfort of her seat, carefully considering the options before her. Taking a sip of tea, she drums her fingers next to the gameboard as she considers her tactics.

Ruby's obviously extremely fast, and that may not be the full extent of her capabilities. However, if she's careful about this, she should still be able to surprise her.

More pieces move, and the time advances as the game continues apace. As Ruby recovers, she'll find that Sayo has vanished yet again... but a snowball comes from behind a pile of heaped snow, followed shortly thereafter by another snowball a little distance away from the first.

But if Ruby dodges in any way to avoid them, she'll find that the second snowball was a slightly delayed curveball, and Sayo never moved at all, giving her more time to perfectly aim her third snowball and take Ruby by surprise by firing from a location Ruby thought she'd already moved from!

[onekindsoul]

Ruby was fast and agile and most of all used to navigating her way through a chaotic battlefield. But what was happening here wasn't something she had experienced before. Her eyes flick up and Shannon was gone from where Ruby could have sworn she should have been. Was she fast? Was it something like Marrow's ability to freeze time?

She didn't really have time to consider her options because Shannon was gone and there was a snowball flying her way. She dodges the first without a problem, and she even manages to catch the curve in the second ones trajectory and manages to twist herself enough to just barely avoid it.

Unfortunately between being pushed into that sort of position and the new snowball coming from a different angle she isn't let with a lot of options on getting away from this one. It catches her so off guard she doesn't think to use her powers to stop or block it and it hits her in the face and sends her stumbling back onto her butt.

"W-Woah!"

[forwantofahorse]

It's easy to fake a superspeed disappearance when there are this many snow forts and snow men around. While Kanon had the most talent for swiftness out of Kinzo's furniture, Shannon was no slouch when pressed either—the two were made for combat, after all.

A rustling comes from behind a nearby snow wall, and Shannon's face pops up from behind it, twisted into a smirk. "KYAAAHAHAHAHA! CHECKMATE, RUUUUUUUBYYY ROSEEEEEEEEEE! HOW DOES DEFEAT TASTE! YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN TO CROSS THE-"

"Wait, no, that isn't right," Sayo mutters from her seat at the gameboard, shaking her head and scribbling out her lines. "Even Ruby isn't that oblivious."

Shannon peeks at Ruby, expression somewhere between sympathetic and guilty. "A- Are you alright, Ruby-san?" she calls as she vaults the wall with one hand (and Sayo returns to her body), offering it to Ruby to help her up when she arrives.

[onekindsoul]

Ruby was still reeling from the snowball hit when Shannon pokes her head out. Ruby was no slouch when it came to a fight but it was certainly possible to catch her off guard. Still when Shannon speaks up she can't help but laugh she takes the hand and pull herself back up to her feet.

"Oh yeah- I'm good. You've got some good moves there. How do you feel like going another round?"

[forwantofahorse]

"I'd really rather not, if I'm being honest... believe it or not, I don't particularly light fighting." She likes winning. There's a difference! "I think I only won because I had the advantage of surprise, hehe." Also very true. Sayo's certain that even with the absolute certainty granted by her darkblood powers, without being able to confuse Ruby like that she wouldn't have managed to eke out a win.

"Also, it is very impolite to hurl snowballs at passerby, Miss Rose! You should know better at your age!" And of course a lot of the absolute ruthlessness toward Ruby came from legitimate irritation.

[onekindsoul]

She can't help but smile at that answer.

"Aw, you're no fun." Her tone is light and teasing. She was a fight junky but she didn't expect other people to follow suit with that love. It was her job to protect people like that.

"Yeah- Well it's not often some gets the drop on me like that. So whatever you did it was a bit more than just luck, even if it did contribute to it." She moves to rub at the back of her head at the next bit.

"Ppffftt okay- well yeah. when you put it that way it makes me sound awful! But this was a battlefield! sometimes it's hard to tell friend from foe from bystander, you know?"

There's a pause before she adds in.

"But yeah. Sorry about that."

[forwantofahorse]

"Apology accepted." Sayo is an expert at giving soft and genuine smiles no matter what she's actually feeling, and that's exactly what Ruby receives even as Sayo is still internally cackling over her victory.

That is, until Sayo realizes that Ruby might relate what happened here to Ange in a hysterical anecdote about how Shannon is more rough and tumble than what either of them thought or something to that effect, and it stops being funny.

It's time to do some damage control.

"...I'm glad that my combat abilities are up to specifications, though; I was worried my functionality had dulled recently, so I should thank you for testing them for me, at least. But I suppose Lord Goldsmith's craftsmanship is impeccable- ah." She freezes theatrically, as if she'd just let slip an important secret.