[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

[pricklybloom]

She hugs Appa to her a bit and glances at Aang. "Definitely the guilt. And I thought I was getting over it here, and that I could make a difference...but then all that stuff happened last month, and it still felt like I was letting people down."

[all_the_aangles]

"How were you letting anybody down?" he asked, gently. "It's not like it was a threat you could have seen coming, or prepared for."

It's a gentle sort of socratic dialogue, though he wouldn't know or use the words. A process of question and answer that changes understanding for one or both parties. Or, at least, it hopefully does.

[pricklybloom]

"I know that. Realistically, I know that, but I still can't help feeling like..." She looked down at Appa, just managing to keep her fingers from clenching to avoid hurting him. "Like I should be stronger than I am. Like I should have done more."

[all_the_aangles]

He nodded, understandingly.

"We all feel that, those of us who try to help. Like if we were..." he sighs. "A bit faster, a bit stronger, a bit smarter - like we could get ahead of fate and circumstance."

He managed a sympathetic smile.

"I know the feeling well. Clenches at your chest, sometimes?"

[pricklybloom]

She blew a sigh out between her lips, nodding. "Yeah." She managed a smile back, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. "It's the worst feeling, huh?"

[all_the_aangles]

"The worst. Like your soul and your body are fighting each other," he agrees.

"I think it's a natural feeling. Not that it being so makes it any easier, of course. But...talking does. Friends do."

[pricklybloom]

"That's a good way of putting it." She smiles faintly, but only for a moment before she looks down again at Appa still in her lap.

"For a long time back home, I was the kind of person that always had to be rescued. All I really wanted was to get involved, and try to help, but I think I mostly just got in the way. But I kept trying, and I thought...or I hoped that I was getting stronger. That I could protect people, the way I wanted. But after what's happened recently, both here and at home...it's hard to feel like I've made any progress at all."

[all_the_aangles]

"It's not about being strong, though," he replied. "My best friend? Sokka? No powers at all. All of us around him had powers - and yet that never stopped him. He was always our...well, our bulwark."

He smiled.

"There's a lot of different ways to be strong. It isn't always good to pick the one."

[pricklybloom]

She was silent, considering that for a moment. But even as she nodded, she couldn't help a small sigh. "That's just it, though. I know there are different ways to be strong, and I'm not trying to pick just one...it'd just be nice to know that I'm getting stronger any way at all."

[all_the_aangles]

He tilted his head at that.

"How do you know you haven't?"

[pricklybloom]

She shrugged a little. "I mean, I probably have. I know I have. It just...doesn't feel that way sometimes, when things go wrong." She glanced down at her hands. "That no matter how hard I try, sometimes it still doesn't make much of a difference."

[all_the_aangles]

"And the feelings can seem very real," he agrees with a nod. "I've been there, too. But you're here, making a difference, just by being here if nothing else."

"It's hard to see, sometimes. But you're always making ripples in the pond. Always."

[pricklybloom]

She's quiet for a moment, letting the words turn in her head. "...I guess that's true," she eventually replies. "We always have an impact, even if we don't always see it."

She knows she can be pretty impatient, so not always seeing how she affects things right away can be difficult. But just because she didn't always see it doesn't mean things don't change.

[all_the_aangles]

"It's hard when we're inside the pond, really."

He offers a reassuring smile.

"But it's easier for others to see it. Who are your close friends here?"

[pricklybloom]

"Um...well, there only one from the same world as me is Shadow." She isn't sure she could say they were close friends, though. "He has been helping with training me, and said that I've been getting better."

[all_the_aangles]

"I didn't just mean from home," he replied. "But that's good to hear."

[pricklybloom]

She smiled, but his comment did have her thinking. Did she have any close friends here? She had some friends, certainly, but...how many of them were really "close"?

"I...don't know if I actually have a lot of close friends here, to be honest," she admitted, and she kind of hated that.

[all_the_aangles]

"Might help, to have some to open up to. I'm lucky...my best friends are here, my girlfriend..."

He paused.

"Though you are opening up to me, I guess. If you want to keep doing that, I'm more than happy to listen."

[pricklybloom]

Glancing at him, she managed a smile. "Thanks. I really appreciate that. I don't...know if I want to keep going right now, though. But if you don't mind hearing me out in the future?"

She felt a little guilty about asking him to listen to her problems later on. But it'd be nice to have someone else to talk to.

[all_the_aangles]

He nodded, slowly.

"Whenever you want. Whatever you need to talk about."

[pricklybloom]

"Thanks." Then, with a sigh, she smiled a bit wider. "But hey, it shouldn't be all about me, either. If you ever need to talk about anything too, just let me know."

[all_the_aangles]

He nods.

"Thanks for that. I'll definitely do that if I need."

[pricklybloom]

"Of course. That's what friends are for, right?"