isleofavalon | Blown on the wind

Blown on the wind

🧙 WHO: Dust & various
⚔️️ WHAT: Catch-all for Dust
🕒 WHEN: Various times
🗺️ WHERE: Various places!
⚠️ WARNINGS: Various... eh, I got nothing, honestly.

I Would Do Anything For Bun (Elfnein, Saber)

So, they mean an ordinary rabbit, right?

[Dust keeps double-checking the quest app and the description it offers. He's met Haru, he's met rabbit-type Warmbloods, and the ordinary animal sort of rabbit still seems just a bit weird to him. But if it isn't one of those, this is WAY too weird, so he really hopes it is one...]

Catching him might be a real pain.

Farming for Experience (Momo)

[At the edge of a field freshly shorn of hay, Dust kneels, one hand to the ground. Kind of a pity he hadn't gotten to do the harvesting -- he probably could have done that quick and painless with a few sweeps of Ahrah. But maybe this offers another opportunity.]

What do you think about trying to turn the earth with some magic?

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[ Momo's been working hard in the field all morning, also wishing she could have had her quirk to create some tools to make the job easier, her hair tied back in a bandana to keep the sweat from dripping into her eyes. It's been hardy work, but rewarding, as she can feel her muscles straining with the repetitive motion.

Though, it seems Dust has a different sort of straining work in mind. ]

Really? I haven't tried earth magic on this scale yet. I'm not sure if I can...

[Truth is, turning soil doesn't play to his strengths at all. He's strong and enduring, sure, but his style sometimes seems closer to acrobatics or dancing than it does to conventional swordplay. Hard repetitive motions don't work for him nearly so well.]

Me neither. But I think I'm starting to get the hang of other elements, or at least how they work for me. So why not make this practice as well as work?

[ It makes sense. And Momo thinks her teachers would be proud of her, using every available opportunity to practice the magic she's come to think of as a (temporary) replacement for her Quirk.

She nods, taking a deep breath and looking at the empty plot in front of her. ]

Alright, so we just... Try to shape the earth the way we want it, right? To turn it and make it ready for planting.

[ She tries to visualize in her mind what she would need to make that happen. ]

I was thinking a little more brute force, to be honest.

[That's his key, after all. Made for battle, he works better in those conditions. So if he just treats this like battle, like the earth is a foe to be slain with force...]

[He pressed his hands to the ground, leaning his weight onto them. A moment passes before a whumph fills the air as the dirt in front of them churns up violently.]

[ The dirt churns itself with a sudden whumph, kicking up a cloud of fine dust that Momo waves away from her face, looking fairly impressed at the result. She coughs lightly. ]

Well! That's certainly one way to do it.

Here, let me try.

[ She steps over to an un-turned section of dirt and presses her hands into it, trying to mimic what she had seen Dust do. The results of her attempt are a bit less sudden, with a ripple of turned earth radiating out from her like a stone dropped into a still pond. ]

The more I see how things work for different people, the more I think magic is really different depending on the user.

[It's not what he'd expect. Magic is magic, right? Fire is fire, earth is earth, and spells are spells. But seeing hers and seeing his, the difference is clear.]

[ It may be a surprising concept to Dust, but it makes perfect sense to Momo. ]

Sure. If two people are given a can of paint and a brush and told to express themselves, the end result will be two different paintings.

It's not quite the same as that, I don't think. It's more like... if you give two people tools, and tell them to build a certain kind of table. And then both of them manage to build that table, using completely different methods. It's not impossible, but it is surprising.

Different methods, but different tables as well, I would imagine. Say it was a coffee table. One person might use a darker wood to build a more traditional style coffee table. Another might use metal and glass to build a more modern one.

[ But she digresses. The point has been made. ]

Maybe it's just because I come from a world with many different examples of powers, but I think even if two people have the same kind of ability, the way they use it will be individual to them alone.

You'd know better than I would, in that case. In Falana, things were -- so different, you couldn't compare them.

[Except for raw skills like swordsmanship, but -- she has it right there, too, doesn't she? Any two swordsmen will develop their skills differently.]

[Which gets Dust to thinking...] I wonder how much of it depends on how different we are, physically.

Oh, hm... I don't know!

[ It's certainly an interesting thing to think about. Back home, much of one's Quirk was either influenced by, or an influence upon, one's physiology. Even if someone didn't have a physical Quirk, it still often had some basis in their biological makeup, such as Momo transforming her fat cells into the things she creates, or Bakugou's sweat being made of combustible nitroglycerin. ]

I really don't know as much about magic or how it works as I would like. I'm not really sure who to ask about that, though. Everyone who has been brought here seems to be in the same position we are.

On the plus side, that means we're all learning together.

[At least Dust doesn't have to feel like he's behind other people. He can't help but hate that sort of thing, even as he knows rationally that it's okay and not something to feel bad about. The problem with having a driven soul as part of your makeup...]

[But he can at least do this. Dust focuses his concentration again, sending ripples into the earth that soon cause another few furrows to erupt.]

Mm! We can all learn from each other and become the best magic users we can be!

[ As Dust sets about tilling the Earth, Momo focuses on doing the same for her portion of the field. ]

...Is that really how you feel?

[He wouldn't be surprised if it is, but... she's handling this all so well it's suspicious. So he has to wonder what she's really thinking. If she's really okay with all this.]

[ Momo looks up, her eyebrows raised, looking a little confused. ]

...Yes? Should I not feel that way?

[Dust remains crouched down even after his magic dissipates, hand half-buried in the churned earth. How to put this.]

You've just... adjusted really well, to being here. Not that it's any of my business, but I wonder what's going on in your head. If you really are handling it as well as you seem to be.

[ Once she's finished tilling her patch of earth, Momo sits back on her heels and wipes her brow with one hand-- inadvertently smearing dirt across her forehead a bit. ]

Well...? [ Her turn to pause and try to put her thoughts to words. ]

I suppose, it's easier for me to throw myself fully into the problem of what I'm supposed to be doing, how I can be helping the effort to stop the calamity that brought us all here... Than it would be to sit and worry about the implications of everything.

[ At night, when she's lying alone in bed, she does think about everyone back home, frozen in time, in danger of collapse, and worry whether everything will turn out alright. This whole thing is just... existentially bigger than anything she's ever dealt with or thought about dealing with. But, at the end of the day, if she allows herself to descend fully into that anxiety spiral, then she'll be of no use to anyone. And she couldn't bear to live with that.

So she puts on a smile, and shrugs lightly. ]

I'm a hero! It's what I do.

...If they had someone in mind when all this happened -- when they decided to reach for people who could help with this -- it must have been you.

[But she has a way of not making him envious. Somehow, when she says things like that, they don't irritate him the way other people's do. Maybe because she puts it as a choice, or maybe because she's straightforward and there's no nonsense about 'living' or 'just adjusting'.]

[Something to think about.]

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Blown on the wind

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