Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
Water Witch
Cyana Martok stepped gracefully up as her name was called, a flow of water wrapped around her and trailing slightly behind like some enormous serpent, leaving not a single drop behind. She nodded her head serenely towards the Legionnaires seated upon the dias and turned to face the pair of living combatants that would test her readiness first. The Legionnaire, Colossal Boy, spun his padded combat-batons with a grin, meeting her calm stare, while the Science Police liaison, Officer Cusimano, simply cracked her neck and leaned on her battle-staff, projecting an air of bored confidence. Cyana failed to note that she was balanced to move in a split-second, and turned her attention to the more obvious target, unfortunately falling into their trap.
Hurling her hand up in a complicated gesture, muttering the words that helped her focus her ancient gift, she sent a torrent of water arcing into Colossal Boy, hurling him backwards, and as she gathered the watery mass to send to Officer Cusimano, too late she saw that the SP officer had used her battle-staff to vault into the air as a hard boot cracked across her face and her concentration faltered. Many gallons of water splashed uselessly to the ground as Cyana herself fell backwards, clutching her face. The SP Officer had nimbly flipped away, and Cyana felt her face grow red, from pain, yes, but also the shame of her poor showing. On one knee, growling words that were meant to be sung, her hand clutched like a claw and the spilled water leapt up and struck the SP Officer from the sky in a torrent, causing her to land in a heap, drenched. Cyana turned in time to see the Legionnaire, having regained his footing, almost upon her, and she rolled to the side as her animated gout of water struck him in the back and pushed him forwards past him in a tumble. Rising to her feet unsteadily, head still ringing from the Officers blow, she divided her attention, causing the stream of water to divide into twin serpentine forms, one for each of the targets, and kept them swirling and off-balance, bedeviled by streams and currents that swept through the air and kept pushing them to and fro, like driftwood seized by the tide.
Both signaled that the challenge was done, and she stood unsteadily while they coughed and spluttered their way back to their corner. She bowed her head again to them, but was not sure if they accepted her silent apology for the way the combat had gone.
She turned now to face the machines that were to challenge her next, afraid to track her eyes across the seated Legionnaires, for fear of seeing some signs of disfavor. The design of the robots did not appear water-proofed, and she gambled that a thorough soaking would short out their inner workings.
As she saw the robots eyes light up and their arms raise, she quickly muttered the necessary incantation and sent twin serpents of water streaming at the pair of robots, hoping to incapacitate them before they even reached her, and then her body was seized, like a fish on a hook and shaken violently by great currents of electricity. As she slammed gracelessly into the floor, she realized that the robots electrical attacks had conducted through her watery tentacles to her own grounded self. It was the mistake of a novice, she reprimanded herself as the world spun and everything went storm-cloud grey.
Moments later her consciousness returned and the world swam back into focus. The Colossal Legionnaire was supporting her head and asking something in a voice that sounded very deep and very far away. “Yes, I am fine,” she said too curtly as she pushed herself up, only to find that the world was spinning again like a maelstrom, with crashing waves pounding in her skull. “Thank you,” she added belatedly, realizing her lack of manners.
Head spinning slightly, she did not hear the specific words that led to her rejection, but the tone and posture of the Legionnaires on the dias were clear. She bowed her head again and stepped back to join the other would-be applicants.
While some of the other rejects seemed to be gathering to commiserate their failure, she saw no comfort in this, and made her way back to the spaceport, to seek transport home, only begrudgingly accepting their contact numbers to stave off their well-meaning, but infuriating chatter.
Home shimmered like a blue and white crystal in the viewports, and she wanted nothing more than to be down there right now, warm in it’s embrace, body humming with the songs of her spiritual advisors. After frustrating long moments, docking procedures were complete and she was on a shuttle to the surface. Already her bones ached to be supported in the eternal seas, and she still had hours before she would be free of customs minutiae, and sterilized against alien microlife. Finally it was done, and she guided her hovercraft to the coordinates where her pod was currently feeding, based on the information transmitted from their tags. Soon she could see them, great shapes breaking the surface under the moonlight, and she set her vehicle to follow at a discrete distance while she slipped into the water to swim with those who where more kin to her than her own species.
Biter was there, and Sunchaser, and they nudged against her while chittering their welcome, but they moved aside as they knew that she needed to seek counsel from the Singer. As she felt his bulk move through the water and beneath her, she braced herself as the enormous baleen rose up gently beside her and offered a fin. She held on as Singer of Secrets Below rose to bring her to the surface, and twisted his vast bulk gracefully in the water, peeling her off like a barnacle and leaving the two floating face to face. His song tore through her like a physical blow, but she had grown accustomed to the pressures of whalesong at such distances, and she sang back, her own voice tiny and fragile-sounding in reply. She told the Singer of her failures, both of temperament and training, and he sang to her that she was young yet, and that both of these things could be improved. She sang of her desire to stay with the pod, and abandon this dream of other worlds, and he countered that the Old Ways *must* be brought back to the seas where it all started, and that he could not make the journey. This was the dream she had dreamt all her life, he sang in gentle reproach, and was she so small a thing that she would swim away from it after only a single bitter taste?
She returned to her hovercraft, wondering when the seas of Envoy had grown so cold, as to leave her shivering, but she knew it wasn’t the temperature, it was the realization that this would no longer be her home. Her dolphin brothers and sisters danced a dance of good journeys, splashing in the waves in her wake, and soon the pod turned to seek richer waters for the days feeding. She turned in the opposite direction, setting the hovercrafts autopilot for the home island, and fell asleep listening to the recorded wisdom that her mentor had sung to her.
She left for Earth anew by mid-day, seeking out a destiny that she was no longer sure she wanted.
The other rejects welcomed her graciously, despite her brusque dismissal of them earlier, and she explained that her people expected great things of her. The one whose body twisted like water confirmed that she hadn’t seen Cyana as the sort to give up, and she’d saved space for her in the quarters the rejects had taken together.
TBC
[ March 14, 2008, 08:02 AM: Message edited by: Set ]
Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
Part two
18 months later;
Cyana had seen many things, learned many things, shared many things with her new teammates, and so it was with some trepidation that she agreed to accept the new invitation to the Legion. Were her teammates not agreed to accept the mass invitation, as recognition for their deeds, she would have preferred to remain with this new family she had found, so strange and different than the ones she had known before.
The Legionnaires had put on a show of looking stern, but Barta had assured her that this tryout session was merely for show, and not an actual requirement. She smiled, thinking how far she had come since that day, only a year ago. The room was the same, even if some of the faces were different. But still, there was Colossal Boy and Officer Cusimano, suited up in padded training gear, and with their choice of staves. She nodded to them, still smiling, and they obligingly took up the same exact positions, the Legionnaire on the offensive, and the Officer feigning disinterest. Cyana raised her hands in a new gesture, a spell she had designed to compensate for her own physical shortcomings, and the volume of water that coiled about her slithered into a suit of form-fitting armor and then froze into ice with a crackling sound. A great shield adorned one hand, and an improbably huge blade the other, both supported by her own powers, and not her physical strength. Colossal Boy was already moving forward, and she batted him out of her way with her icy shield, using enough aquakinetic force to lift him off of his feet and send him back several meters. Meanwhile, she could feel Officer Cusimano’s quarterstaff impacting sharply against her unarmored face, but the fluid in her bodies tissues answered her call and absorbed the kinetic energy, dissipating it throughout her entire body, so that her head moved not at all from the sharp impact. She reached out almost casually behind her, to where Officer Cusimano was landing, and swept her feet out from under her with the oversized ice-sword, and before the Officer could regain her footing, the blade had dissolved back into water, slithered around her, and then frozen back into ice. Finishing off the last words to this spell, she turned to see that Colossal Boy had regained his footing and was now sweeping her own legs from under her. She fell hard onto her back, the breath leaving her for a second, but with a single explosive syllable, send her armor and shield flying off of her body in a spray of icy shards that tore at the Legionnaires armored padding. Before he realized his danger, the shards sprung up and wrapped around him, melting and refreezing into an icy prison similar to the one that now held Officer Cusimano frozen to the floor. Both signaled that the combat was over, and she caused the ice to revert to water and surround her once again, a massive watery python, coiling and uncoiling as it whirled about her lithe swimmers body.
She turned to the two combat-droids and her face reddened as she remembered her childish error in their last encounter. Their eyes lit up as they began enacting combat protocols, and she spoke what seemed the very same spell, only this time, the twin serpents did not remain attached to her, they remained attached to each other, conducting the electricity of each robot into the other, to no great effect. Still, the water ran across them and found many places to enter into the inner workings of the machine, and as she hurled herself into the air to avoid the lumbering machines, a final word caused the water inside the machines to freeze into ice, shoving aside delicate machinery and jetting forth from the joints and openings of the machines in deadly icicles. As she landed gracefully, the robots clattered to the floor in an array of broken machines and shattered ice.
With a final gesture, the ice encrusting the destroyed robots became fluid, and leapt through the air to surround her again, reforming and refreezing into armor, shield and blade, which she then raised to salute her new teammates, hoping to once again find a family, so far from home.
Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
Notes;
Envoy – world settled by cetaceans from Earth 300 years ago, after the Uplift Rebellion resulted in most terrestrial cetaceans gaining sentience. Envoy is 90% water, with the 10% landmass being primarily volcanic islands near the equator, or ice-covered polar regions. Several tens of thousands of humans also dwell on Envoy, some predating the arrival of the cetaceans and consisting of Pacific and Southeast Asian islanders, while more recent arrivals are a mix of ethnicities. Envoy has restricted tourism, as the cetaceans have forbidden many recreational activities, and exports generally are artistic, craft-related or cultural, as mass aquaculture is also frowned upon, if not banned outright. To the post-cetacean settlers of Envoy, the sentient whales and dolphins are seen as special creatures, even as priests of a new faith based on reverence for nature. Hundreds of humans of the most recent generations have begun to display strange aquakinetic abilities, usually manifesting as a gift for predicting the weather, but under tutelage from cetacean ‘spiritual advisors,’ individuals known as Water Witches have begun to appear, capable of moving volumes of liquid water with their minds.
Cyana Martok is the most powerful water witch ever seen, able to move hundreds of gallons of water with her aquakinetic powers, and having learned to boil it into steam or freeze it into ice, as well as perform more uncanny stunts, such as using the fluids within her own cells to cushion the force of blows striking her body! Her spiritual advisors have insisted that it is not her place to remain on Envoy, and she has regretfully left her home world behind, to use her tremendous gifts in service to all the races of the United Planets.
Cyana is a lithe young woman, with shoulder-length black hair and dark brown skin. She has Polynesian features, and moves with seemingly superhuman grace in the water, and with some degree of athleticism on the land as well. She is of Earth-human descent, and has no special physical modifications to allow her to hold her breath underwater (although she can certainly hold her breath longer than most!), nor to swim, using her ability to move the water around her to propel her through the water with such grace (although, again, even without powers, she is a world-class swimmer). She does have some physiological modification, allowing her skin to remain in a waterborne environment for hours, or even days, without suffering any deterioration, and also can consume salt water as readily as fresh, although she tends to spit out excess salt later. ‘Water Witches’ have an assortment of traditional gear, including a pouch full of special materials (all organic in nature, shells, feathers, teeth, bits of coral, etc.) as well as a dull-bladed ritual dagger called an athame. They tend to wear an outfit they refer to as a ‘Witches Robe,’ which consists of a thigh-length bathrobe-looking silk outfit, worn over a one-piece swimsuit. The Witches Robe is slipped off when they enter the water, either being left behind or stowed in the witches satchel of magical paraphenalia. Each separate water manipulation learned by a witch is accompanied by particular hand gestures and phrases, and while they refer to these manipulations as spells, the gestures and incantations primarily serve to place the witch into the proper mindset necessary to cause the water manipulation desired.
Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
Hyperpath: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic | Subscribe To Topic
