deercountry | [open] Oh the weather outside is weather

It's the ultimate showdown. An all-out brawl. Any time, any place. (Daytime in a park is most likely.) People don't need a reason to join the pitched battle, other than the thrills of victory and defeat--and the promise of a hot drink at a cafe later. Will you test your might?

Midoriya, snow caked in his hair, peels himself away from the fray and plods over in his snow boots towards anyone who looks like they'd be up for it.

"Want to join us?"

Or perhaps you're already there, preparing to catch this nerd in the back of the head with a snowball. Sometimes being your best self means being wicked confident at snowball fights. Some things, however, shouldn't be tried at home.

ooc: Can treat this prompt as a mingle if you'd like. Just indicate whether you're open to all (OTA) other characters tagging in.

cw: teens in danger

Nothing makes fast friends like accidentally entering someone's memory and averting trauma. At first Midoriya was worried they wouldn't be able to track each other down again, but he did give his hero name. Deku is also his screen name on deerNet, because a hero should at least be somewhat easy to contact. Life finds a way.

He's at home video chatting. His Omni's camera shifts wildly as he brings it closer to watch. Midoriya's hair is getting scraggly; it could use a trim. He's in a boring gray-blue hoodie bought in Trench. Behind him is the wallpaper of a plain Crenshaw district apartment. He flashes a grin.

"OK Paul-kun, I'm ready. What are you going to show me?"

Midoriya had no problem breaking the seal of his own deerNet anonymity to bring this person some needed mushrooms. Not everyone has the time or resources to gather their medicine, and this person said he was suffering blood corruption. Midoriya didn't know too much, other than that even while having a hard time, this person had thanked him for fighting so hard in November.

He'd introduced himself by his screen name, which was also his hero name: Deku. However, when he sends a text saying he's here, he's off-duty in his civvies: warm puffy jacket, colorful scarf, gloves, and snow boots. His freckled cheeks are pink with cold.

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.

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.

Edited 2022-01-05 01:53 (UTC)

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.

"Hold on."

Paul fidgets with his own Omni, disappearing from frame as he checks the visible screen again. The camera is focused (more or less) on an empty, wide room - perhaps a studio, once - largely free of furniture, but thick with dust. Paul chose it for the wide broken windows that flood it with natural light.

"That's...better," he says, coming back in view. His hair is as messy as Midoriya's, and he's wearing a loose black shirt and pants, coat discarded for the sake of the demonstration. He spins the long knife in his right hand absently and smiles at Midoriya.

"It's a swordmaster drill," he explains, kneeling on one knee in front of the Omni, a few inches too close to the lens, "I finally found enough space. Can you see the room?"

"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!

He sits up straighter. Once, maybe a year ago, he would have stared in awed anticipation or made high-pitched noises of excitement. Now, learning about pro moves is routine. He simply opens his notebook where it rests on his coffee table offscreen.

"You only need to back up a bit, if it's not too much trouble."

He honors Paul's wish to be referred to by his first name with no title. However, since learning of Paul's role back home, there has been a slight shift in Midoriya's speech. Not all of it translates all the time, and Midoriya wants to be friends foremost, but he still uses more words to say something he could in less.

"Of course." Paul flashes another quick smile, this one as cocky as the one he wore when they first discussed sparring.

The slight shift of politeness in Midoriya's way of speaking is something he notices, and in an odd way, it feels like more of a familiarity than a formality. Perhaps it's because Midoriya is one of the few people who knows even that much about Paul.

Maybe that's why he's doing something as frivolous as this, instead of anything else he could and should be doing. He considers that as he stands up and walks to his starting point, glancing back at the Omni and nodding before he takes a simple stance with his feet hip width apart, right foot slightly in front of the left.

Maybe he wants an excuse to talk to someone, and that's a thought that's fuel for motion. Paul begins the flow of the drill, a series of specific forms: a block, a guard, a parry, a thrust, a slash. Each gesture is exquisitely controlled, measured to a deliberate tempo. It's a demonstration of technique as close to perfect as the human body allows. Once he reaches the other side of the creaking floor, he turns around, flipping the knife in the air and catching it in his other hand.

"That's one of the Ginaz school sequences," he calls out to Midoriya, rolling back his shoulders and ticking his head from one side to the other, loosening his joints, "It's the basis this one is elaborated from. I'll try to keep it slow enough to see."

And Paul bursts into fluid, twisting motion as he starts back across the room, a much more intricate rendition of the forms interwoven with steps of advancement and evasion. Even slowed it's all but a blur, and Paul exalts in the glory of easy, painless motion so much that he decides to add a flourish of his own, arcing into a showy and useless back flip that he lands on one foot because he can -

- and he drops out of view with a startled expression as the floor gives way underneath him.

"Join--" a snowball cuts him off, splattering fluff right above his temple, leaving him stupefied. Give him a moment while he gets his wits about him.

It's rare to see the unflappable Todoroki caught by surprise. Because Midoriya is a good friend, he does not laugh at him. He turns his head to call out to the person practicing their headshots.

"He's still a bystan--"

Splat. A snowball to his entire face.

The next snowball comes hurling from the left but he's ready for it this time, throwing up a wall of ice with a sweep of his hand. It blocks the attack from their unknown foe from now, but he's not letting his guard down.

"Who are we up against?"

Midoriya drags his gloved hand down his face to slough off the snow. The usual punishment for hitting bystanders is shoveling snow. However, they were both standing in the active battle zone. Midoriya failed to account for this gray area. He is so sorry.

"It's a brawl, there are no teams. But... if you want to teach them all a lesson for hitting someone not in the fight... I'll help."

A smile spreads on his face as he closes his hand in a fist. The power of friendship against impossible odds? Bring it on.

[Oz was mystified by the sight of an honest-to-goodness snowball fight. He's heard of them and seen kids do this in the streets, but a noble like him couldn't really participate... Even in the privacy of the manor, it wasn't like he'd be throwing snowballs at Ada or Gilbert. His little sister would get him back and Gil might not recover.

So excuse him while he's embarrassing himself. Oz can't even pack snow into a solid snowball. All of his attempts to join in just crumble into harmless snow flurries. Despite it, he can't help but laugh at his attempts.]

I'm not very good at this, am I?

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!"

There's no rush of adrenaline at the prospect of an all-out brawl. Still, there's a subtle shift in his stance, feet spreading and shoulders automatically straightening as he distributes his weight automatically. He follows Midoriya's movement, drawn in by the challenge set before him.

From the corner of his mouth, his lips quirk up. "I don't see a problem with that." He starts pulling at the cuff of his uniform, exposing his forearms for the attack to come. "Quirks or no quirks?"

~~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.

Edited 2022-01-06 21:37 (UTC)

It's like a shared secret, though it's mixed with some terrible things. It's not the first time Midoriya's had that kind of secret. No one but the small handful of witnesses in an alley in Hosu City would know that one of his friends chased down a violent criminal to kill him in revenge. It's not a hero's job to take vengeance, except perhaps to capture a villain for someone else's safety. Saving people always comes first.

He grins back. He often studies on his own, but he treasures his friendships, old and new. He didn't have any in junior high. Being friends with Midoriya means helping each other out and growing stronger together. Not long after arriving in Deer Country, he sought sparring partners to help continue the practice he'd be getting with his classmates. There's another imbalance he's been subconsciously trying to even out: Midoriya keenly feels the absence of his main rival. So, if a touch more fierceness than strictly necessary creeps into his grin, it's because he's channeling him.

He scribbles Gii-na-zu down in Japanese syllabary, wondering if he's spelling it right. He's mentally listing the merits and demerits of allowing a weapon to leave one's hand. Then he focuses with rapt attention on Paul. Slow enough to see? That makes him want to measure the speed of his Full Cowl against its true speed. He forgets himself as he sucks in a quick breath. He's analyzing which moves he might be able to adapt, and which would be impossible without some serious dedication--

CRASH!!

He's up out of his seat in an instant.

"Paul-kun!! Are you OK?!"

Now he knows what Madam Generosity's gift is for. His outfit is a simple gray suit with a black shirt and a green tie. It's plain, but that suits him. On a night when he's sure some people he knows will be at The Red, Midoriya dresses, fails to calm down his curls, gives up on tying his tie properly, puts on his usual red sneakers, and heads out.

He's not nervous per se. The environment is too breathtaking to make him nervous, somehow, and he's mostly just elated to be here. However, he's usually not the center of attention at these things, nor has he had many chances to attend gatherings, being a busy Hero Course student. Out of habit, he wanders towards a nearby wall while he waits to spot anyone he knows, absently plucking at one of the fingerless gloves that came with the suit. It's the classic scene: He may as well be in a late 20th century coming-of-age film.

A dark desert mouse hops into view, nose twitching as she looks at the camera, and then she bounces across the room and dives into the hole.

A new message request is sent to Midoriya's device, Omen-sent, and when he opens it he will find Paul's face - again, too close to the lens, even when that lens is a magical mouse's eyes - dusty and deeply sheepish, cheeks flushed pinkish and eyes slightly averted.

"I'm fine." It's a new colloquialism he's picked up, muttered more than said. He does have a light scratch on his cheek, and he's going to be bruised, but in a way, he's fortunate. The fall into this deep basement was long enough that he had time to fall properly.

"That wasn't exactly how that was supposed to go." He almost wishes he had been knocked unconscious, or broken something. At least he would be distracted from wanting to find an even deeper hole to sink into.

The girl who swans up to Midoriya in a plain black dress paired with a wire circlet might fit in said film, although her borrowed cape and veil would not. She has a confident ease to her bearing, the veil reversed to fall glittering over her unbound dark hair as she steps towards him on her little black slippered feet with a smile that's half-teasing already.

"Hello," she says, warmly, stopping in front of him with her hands clasped at the level of her waist, primly drawn up to her full height (for all that it's still a few inches short of Midoriya's), "I like your shoes."

Ruby knew a thing or two about wallflowers. Honestly she had spent a lot of time at school being one, at least until the school blew up and she set off on her own coming-of-age story. She was just caught up in the adventure of fighting monsters and righting wrongs that the little things hadn't interested her as much. It wasn't until she got here that she started to get the hang of it.

So when she saw Deku there she couldn't help but smile and moved to join him at the wall. She's wearing a suit herself. The last time she went to a party in a dress she had lost her eye. She'd rather blame the dress than anyone else involved with that situation.

"Hey. You aren't just going to hang around here all night are you? Let loose and have some fun."

I'm fine is Midoriya's line, usually said when he is absolutely not anywhere near fine. But, neither of them are grievously injured at the moment. He counts his blessings.

Paul had chosen an abandoned building of some sort, and there were plenty around just rotting away. Still, Midoriya hadn't expected the whole floor to give. Because Midoriya is a good friend, he does not laugh at him, though Paul looks ready to melt into the earth and never rise again. Midoriya is more concerned about cave-ins. He shifts his head from side to side, as if that will magically broaden the "camera" angle and give a clue to what's behind Paul.

"Where are you? How far did you fall?"

[open] Oh the weather outside is weather

OPEN: SNOWBALL FIGHT!!

For Paul Atreides - Sick Moves, Bro

For Illarion - Just Your Friendly Neighborhood Deku

OTA

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1/2

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Open: Wallflower Time (Snake Den at The Red) (Event)

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