[Open] Dead flowers for the torn apart

[pricklybloom]

🧙 WHO: Amy Rose and YOU
⚔️️ WHAT: Catch-all for October. Recent events have brought up some bad memories for Amy, so she's keeping herself busy to try and keep her mind off things. It only kind of works.
🕒 WHEN: Throughout October
🗺️ WHERE: Ruins of Celliwig and Camelot
⚠️ WARNINGS: Possible mentions of death, war, and (robot) zombies. Because this is a children's franchise.

A. Task: Don’t Lose Your Head

[ She knows that she should be paying attention to her task, but Amy Rose can't keep her eyes from wandering over what's left of Celliwig. She could argue that she's keeping a look out for the Headless Horseman, to protect the volunteers in case he tries to attack again. Yet as she looks at the city's ruins - seeing the leftover destruction, watching as the survivors have to retrieve their dead - all she can think of is the diaster around them. How they failed.

She failed. It keeps happening.

Gripping the handle of her hammer, she shakes her head and releases a shaky breath. Can't focus on the past. Pick yourself up, and move on.

She's failed before. But she won't fail now. She'll keep these people safe.

What's left of them. ]

B. Not Quite a Puppy Parade

[ She'd hoped that the Pet Adoption Fair would be a little less intense, and it does help to a degree. It's hard not to smile when you're surrounded by cute animals, especially the capybaras that are so friendly.

Yet somehow it's the fae frogs that she finds herself drawn to. She isn't really much a frog person herself, honestly, and with her room at the inn already so cramped with her new roomate, she can't imagine having much room for any pet. But despite their attitude, she keeps coming back to the frogs and chatting with them a bit.

Because she can't help thinking back to a certain frog back home, wondering if he might sound like this if he could talk. Perhaps to others...but certainly not his best friend.

The friend always in constant search of him...traveling everywhere just to find him.

She hadn't known...she never even realized. She thought she'd seen him at HQ once, but she hadn't been paying attention. He was her friend too, but she hadn't even thought to think about him. She had no idea, until... ]

C. Training

[ Even with her busy schedule - taking on a quest, volunteer work, helping with the survivors, on top of her classes and her job - Amy still has time, makes time, for training.

She attacks the wooden dummies with some combination of using her hammer, hand-to-hand combat, and her dark magic. Her shadow seems to ripple with each strike against her immobile opponents, each hit somehow landing harder than the last, despite her strength obviously waning.

But she doesn't let up. She can't.

She strikes the dummy in front of her again, her hammer laying forgotten on the ground for the moment as her boxercising instincts kick in. She punches and kicks the training dummy, and her shadow moves out of sync from her, merging with the dummy's and choking it.

It's not enough. It's never enough!

Her shadow spikes through the dummy as she punches it, sending splintered wood flying everywhere. Stepping back, she takes a few ragged breaths as she looks at the destroyed object in front of her, then down at her hand. Some of the wood had ripped the material of her glove, revealing patches of the torn skin underneath.

She winces as she clenches her injured hand into a fist, but a moment later her hand is surrounded by light. It glows for a long moment, and when it fades she checks to make sure the injury is gone. Then she wipes her brow and reaches down to pick up her hammer. ]

D. Wildcard

((Feel free to catch Amy elsewhere! She'll be out around Camelot, or at the inn helping the survivors, or working her job at the Helleste Café. Or hit me up at usamichan13 to plot something else if you'd like!))

Comments

Training

[phoenixwiz]

(It has been a rough few weeks since the terrifying events during the Fall Equinox. While it was definitely good that he was able to help in getting Lestari’s citizens to safety and bandaged up a couple of them, Harry wasn’t prepared to hear the news of Celliwig’s demise some time after the rescue missions were done. Hearing the news hit him hard and he soon found himself feeling quite sorry for the fallen city. As mixed as his feelings towards Celliwig can be, he doesn’t want to see it be destroyed.

The destruction and loss of life over there has reminded him too much of the war in Hogwarts: spells flung from both sides, the castle being reduced into rubble, the immense loss of life, and many people being altered by the experience. Sure, his side won in the end, but they also lost many lives and he had lost friends and allies too.

He is also at the training grounds, trying to keep his mind away from thinking back on the memories as he practices elemental magic on some dummies. Rose and Hedwig are also feeling down as they look on in morose. Trying to fight back the memories as he concentrates on the dummy in the middle with his eyes closed, he soon finds himself feeling electricity flowing through his arms and into his fists, raises his arms, and proceeds to shoot bolts of electricity at the dummy, singeing it in the process.

When he opens up his eyes again, he sees how burnt the dummy got by his newly unlocked electricity magic but he didn’t know how to respond to this new achievement at this time. Honestly, he might be feeling so numb today.)

[pricklybloom]

[ The hum of electricity behind her sends a chill down her spine, and she snatches up her hammer, poised for attack as she turns around. But seeing a familiar face stills her, and with a sigh she lowers her weapon. ]

Oh, uh...hey, Harry.

[phoenixwiz]

(Whoops! That electrical singeing did caught Amy’s attention and he is sweating as he rubs his hand against his neck and tries to explain himself about what had happened to the dummy he just burned.)

Oh, Amy, hi. You see, I was doing some elemental magic target practise with some training dummies when I, um, well, shot some electricity onto that dummy from my hands. So I just unlocked a new element to play with.

[pricklybloom]

[ Glancing over at the electrocuted dummy, she laughs a bit. ] I see. Well, congrats on getting a new element.

Besides, I can't really talk about damaging these dummies. [ She gestures to the dummy she'd been practicing on...or whatever's left of it. ]

[phoenixwiz]

Oh, you smashed that other dummy into pieces?

(Granted, the training dummies usually get replaced with new dummies at the end of the day after taking plenty of hits and attacks, though the damages can vary from person to person. Singeing dummies does produce different results compared to smashing up dummies.)

It looks like you have some hand to hand combat experience. That is pretty impressive, I got to admit.

[pricklybloom]

[ She rubs the back of her head, a little embarrassed. ] Yeah. Guess I need to work some things out.

To be honest, I've only really started practicing hand-to-hand combat when I got here. I have some friends who've been teaching me. Usually when I fight I use my hammer. [ She hoists the large hammer over her shoulder. ]

[phoenixwiz]

That’s really kind of them to teach you a couple of moves.

(And yes, he did see the hammer and is in awe of its size and how she is able to carry it around with her. Rose is also distracted by its size as well as she squeaks hyperactively while partly annoying Hedwig by accident.)

Wow, that is a large hammer you have in your disposal. What’s it like to use it in a fight if I may ask?

[pricklybloom]

Yeah, it's been really helpful.

[ Though not enough since she hadn't been much help... ]

Oh, yeah... [ She holds up the hammer easily with one hand. ] I...guess it's how you might imagine fighting with a hammer? I can use it to hit back things that are coming towards me, or send things flying. I can smash things, knock things away, and I can even use it to jump a bit higher if I do it right.

[phoenixwiz]

It sounds like your hammer can do a lot of things.

In my world, we just uses wands as weapons and magic focus tools, so we don’t have that many weapon options since wands are very common in the UK wizarding community and other parts of my world, although I do remember that one of the founders of my school was very known for using a sword as his main weapon in the early years.

[pricklybloom]

That makes sense. It's hard to have other kind of weapons when you can just use magic.

[phoenixwiz]

Yeah, it’s basically like a habit that is hard to break. I haven’t used my own wand in nearly a year since I got here and I had given up using it after a few weeks of trying to get it to work.

(Actually two wands, but Harry doesn’t want to bother mentioning the Elder Wand a lot these days.)

At one point, a friend did asked me if it is possible to infuse magic into weapons because he tried to do that with his dagger and elemental magic. I haven’t thought about it much until he brought it, so I might consider doing an experiment with a weapon from this world someday.

[pricklybloom]

Oh yeah? That could be interesting.

[ She glances at her hammer, wondering. Could she...? ]

[phoenixwiz]

Yeah, I might want to try to find a weapon to practise with and see what I can do with said magic and elemental magic and if my friend’s suggestion can be possible.

Probably checking out the weapons shops in the city to see what they have available at the moment.

[pricklybloom]

Oh yeah, I remember seeing some weapon shops. I've never really used other weapons before, but I might check them out too.

[phoenixwiz]

Glad that we’re thinking of the same thing as well, Amy. It doesn’t hurt to try out something new while we’re here.

I have been used to channel magic through my hands and thoughts for months now, but I have been thinking of using weapons that are not wands in the event I couldn’t use magic that freely.

(The experience at the magic-blocking maze in a pre-Fall Equinox Lestari to find Kymbyr got him thinking of trying to fight with weapons since then, not to mention having seen Ken fighting with his polearm too.)

[pricklybloom]

[ She nods. ] Yeah, I think it'd definitely help. It's why I keep up with my hammer, and why I started learning hand-to-hand combat. You never know when you might need it.

[ For all the good it might do, considering the events of last month. ]

[phoenixwiz]

(He has been dreading to talk too much about the disastrous events of the previous month as much as possible and how it is similar to what he had seen back in Scotland before he arrived. So finding ways to cope from the pain and deal with it is much appreciated.)

Same here: I have been hoping to learn to switch between magic and combat, despite having very little experience with weapons before. I once held a sword when I was 12 to stop a giant Basilisk that was putting plenty of people in my school into a statue like coma, including one of my best friends.

(He decides to create a small electricity current with his index fingers to practice with and begins to ‘shape’ it into different forms.)

[pricklybloom]

[ She blinks a little. ] Wow...there was a Basilisk in your school?

[phoenixwiz]

Yeah, there was one living underneath my school. And it was really huge.

(Huge for a twelve year old wizard that is. Though it may be dead in his world, its fangs and venom were still handy in destroying Horcruxes as they did managed to destroy Voldemort’s Diary and Hufflepuff’s Cup.)

The reason why it was there is because one of the founders of my school had a disagreement with his fellow founders over who they can allow to enroll to the school, so he left the school entirely bitterly but not before leaving the Basilisk in the underground chambers.

[pricklybloom]

That...seems like a pretty big oversight! Did anyone else in the school know about the Basilisk living down there?

[phoenixwiz]

Unfortunately, no. In fact, not everyone knew about the Basilisk living under the school for a long time until someone possessed a friend of mine through an old diary and tricked her into opening the chamber it was living in.

[pricklybloom]

[ Someone should really report this school for negligence or something. ]

Why would someone want to do that?

[phoenixwiz]

Because the person who thought it was a good idea to trick my friend in opening it had a similar mindset with the man who created the Chamber in the first place: taking out anyone with less than pure pure magic blood out of the school, which I find as just discriminatory.

(He soon begins to tear up as he reaches another part of the story that he never thought he would recount again. It is also clear that Harry is choking in tears as he breaks down.)

And he was trying to take her life force away so he can return back to being fully alive again and leave her dead inside the Chamber for good.

(Oh Merlin, how he could not forgot how terribly close Ginny was to dying as Voldemort’s memory of his younger self slowly gaining strength while inside the Chamber: it must have been terrible to see her lying on the floor in that state.)

I could’ve lost my friend if it weren’t me, her brother, and our Headmaster’s pet phoenix coming to her rescue and stopping the man’s plans to return again in time.

[pricklybloom]

[ She takes in a breath as Harry talks, hearing the fear in his voice even though the events had already passed. Stepping closer, she gently places her hand on his. ]

I'm sorry...you've really been through a lot, huh?

[phoenixwiz]

Yeah, a lot of things have happened to me back in my world for a long time: plenty of thing that no one else shouldn’t go through.

(Tears are running down on his cheeks as he speaks. Hedwig and Rose could see that he is in distress right now and that he needs some help in moving on.)

I’m sorry, it has been a long time since that happened but I still couldn’t get all of that out of my head.