[open]

[suddenlybees]

Who: Kano & OTA
What: magic practice, pettiness, finals
Where: Lumière, greenhouse, library
When: mid-month, before finals
Warnings: self-harm for prompt i., none expected for the rest
Notes: details of Kano's new Fey Contract can be found on his app

i. Lumière dormitory rooftop
[ Fey magic is a really... terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. But Kano is determined to make it work, this new Contract that he'd forged a couple of days ago, but it's just so different from his usual illusion magic that he'd worked ten whole years to get to the point where he is now, illusions seamless and effortless compared to him staring at his arm right now wondering what he's doing wrong?

Because his arm is bleeding, a bloody knife on his lap while he pokes at the wound with his other hand and it just comes back bloody, him wincing because it hurts and why isn't the magic working? There's nothing intuitive about this at all, and he has no idea how he's supposed to make it work, with the magic supposed to be healing and dulling pain but it's just doing the opposite for him, the pain making it hard to keep a smile on his face, and making him feel like crying a little.

With a sigh, he waves hand over the bleeding cut instead of touching it, and it disappears— simply masked underneath an illusion, but it's still there while he tries to figure out how to do this, preferably before he bleeds out.

It won't come to it, though. He has three years worth of band-aids stocked up, and he knew they would be useful someday. ]

ii. campus, on the way to the greenhouse or inside
[ But you know what always makes up for terrible days? Even more terrible ideas to get your mind off previous ones. This one isn't that bad, though, because it's something that'll have positive long-term consequences. Probably.

Anyways, it's Kano with long sleeves and pants and winter gloves and the hood of his jacket pulled over his head and eyes and also a bandanna over the rest of his face so he can have as little skin showing as possible. It isn't all because of botched healing practice, though, it's because he's lugging around a three gallon plastic jug in his arms— you know, one of those large plastic containers twice the size of your head that you can buy cheese balls in, but instead of cheese balls, it's bees.

It's a jar full of bees.

He had to ship them to a PO in town and then lug them all the way back to campus; this insect purchasing restriction is really an awful pain. ]

iii. library
[ But also, anyways, it's almost finals and while Kano did surprisingly okay on his midterms, he's got to do slightly more okay on his finals too, because exam scored are literally all that's carrying his grades without the homework to pad it.

So the library it is... Books, his arch nemesis... Him, sitting at one of the open study areas with a stack of brand new text books in front of him that barely look touched, a mug of something on the table that's a dark dark red to the point that it's almost black and also has four tea bags sitting inside it that's steeped so long the tea is no longer steaming, and also hands clamped over his ears like he's trying to block out ambient noise, or massage away a headache, or give himself a headache so he can go hang out in the infirmary for the next two weeks and not do finals.

Why does Daybreak have to be a school??? Schools suck. ]

Comments

[suddenlybees]

Do you want to try doing a book completely blind?

[ It would help him out a lot, being able to get through this stupid thick books on daemons and ancient eldritch monsters or whatever he can find from the library. ]

[deuteranope]

[this is so suspicious, but at the same time, he can't think of anything worthy of suspicion that would be in a book Kano has access to...]

I fucking guess...?

[suddenlybees]

Okay! Concentrate hard, alright?

[ They're doing it here and now, apparently--

He hops off the bed and walks to a spot in the room, where Maverick's desk sits. ]

My room's arranged a bit differently, but right about here is where the book is. Do your thing~

[ He taps the ground with his foot. Right there. ]

[deuteranope]

You wanna do it that fucking blind?!

[THAT'S SO MUCH FURTHER AWAY THAN ANYTHING AND HE CAN'T SEE WHAT HE'S CHANGING AND IT'S ALREADY HARD BECAUSE HE DIDN'T WRITE IT OR KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT IT AT ALL

oh god he's gonna fail SHIFT THE BLAME]

There's no fucking way you're stupid enough to expect that to work, right?

[suddenlybees]

Yeah??

[ To both those questions, yes?? If it's just changing colors of things, Kano can do it too— but he can't do it if it's too far away, if he loses sight of it, if somebody punches him in the stomach, so he needs this from Maverick. ]

I need you to be able to do this for me! If it's that much, I'm sure you can do it! It's a book and there's words- umm, the cover is blue, and... Do you know the expanding brain meme?

[deuteranope]

[The chances of him changing it permanently would be increased if it was actually in front of him!!!]

Are you saying that's what's on the fucking cover or what you want me to fucking do?

[suddenlybees]

That's what's on the cover. I thought maybe if you could envision what it is, it'd be easier for you?

[ Blue cyborg head. ]

[deuteranope]

This is so fucking ridiculous...

[but Kano's not budging, so...guess he'll just imagine a book there, all blue and shit with a head on the cover, a couple rooms over... It's hard enough without trying to make it a gradient throughout, and he's already focusing on blue, so that's what he's hoping all the book's ink changes to. Heck, even if the title goes blue, he'll fucking take it at this point. Stupid useless power given to stupid useless him -- ]

This is stupid, I can't even fucking picture what it fucking is you fucking want me to change!

[suddenlybees]

[ Kano will honestly take anything that isn't boring black on white, so the bar is very very low. ]

Just the words to be pretty colors so it doesn't get boring to read! Like... Here, chapter eleven.

[ He has to close his eyes to do this, but then he's reciting: ]

"While there is great diversity among different vertebrate nervous systems, they all share a basic structure: a CNS that contains a brain and spinal cord and a PNS made up of peripheral sensory and motor nerves."

[deuteranope]

[what the fuck]

Wh -- ?! Do you have a photographic memory?

[TODAY IS SUCH A WILD DAY IS HE ACTUALLY ASLEEP RIGHT NOW? actually hold on, he's gonna pinch himself. Ow, nope. Not dreaming.]

[suddenlybees]

No? Haha, did I surprise you? It's not like that, though~ It's 'cause I just read it, that I still remember~

[ IF HE HAD MEMORY LIKE THAT, HE WOULDN'T STRUGGLE SO MUCH, HE THINKS... but it's still a good memory, well trained to pay attention to any words he comes across to keep in the back of his mind just in case, and that just in case happens to be for a very long time. ]

[deuteranope]

That's still really fucking amazing...

[Ugh. If Kano tried, there's no doubt in Mav's mind that he'd be the smarter one. He probably shouldn't be feeling so grateful that the other's basically already given up on himself... It's the guilt that pushes him to try again, but this ice he closes his eyes.]

Uh, say it again, that...chapter eleven shit.

[This time, he'll focus really hard on recreating a page in his mind -- fairly easy, with how much he's read. He can imagine the feel of the paper, and that tight knit it had from being pressed into a thin, sturdy sheet when you looked real closely at it. The standard black font printed stark against the page going from professional and droll to vibrant as it melted away into blue.

He imagines the page easily, but he loses confidence that anything about it has changed as he frowns to himself, lifts his shirt, and sighs. His tattoos have gone blue as can be.]

Of fucking course, because that's really what I was fucking going for... [But it did activate this time... His eyes drift over to the door unbidden as his curiosity rises.]

[suddenlybees]

[ Kano lets his eyes close too as he recites, slow and making sure to enunciate clearly, as if a boring monotone would translate into boring black ink and help out in any way. With his eyes closed, he misses Maverick checking on the ink on his skin, catching his shirt drop back down when his eyes flutter open and gaze shifts to follow Maverick's over to the door. ]

I wonder if it worked? Let's go see~

[ He hops up onto his feet to leave the room first, for Maverick to follow or not. ]

[deuteranope]

[He doesn't want to find out if he succeeded or not, but at the same time, he wants to know. If only he could do that without all these dumb steps in between. Still, Kano going off means that he must follow, because like hell hes going to let him keep the results to himself, or...something weird, he doesn't know, he's kind of coming apart at the seams, here.

When the book is retrieved, it will be largely unchanged, but the page where chapter eleven begins has the lettering starting off in a vibrant, beautiful blue before fading darker, darker, darker back into black at the bottom of the page. Not the result he wanted, but it's more than what Mav could have hoped for, really.]

[suddenlybees]

[ Kano flings open his bedroom door and steps inside the room. It is, as always, completely barren, both the walls and the desk, things presumably shoved into his closet because the door is always closed. A bearded dragon stares at Maverick from the mess of a blanket nest on bed— a bed comprised of two bunk beds shoved together to make a full sized one, and he spends every night hoping he doesn't fall through the crack.

The book isn't exactly on the ground by his desk, though. Kano has to kneel down and pry up the floorboard to reveal a little space down there where he retrieves the book. Maybe this is why Maverick had such a hard time placing it. ]

...There it is! Here, chapter eleven!! [ He hops to his feet and shoves the book in Maverick's face so he can see too. ] I can't believe it, you actually did it!! That's amazing, isn't it?! Incredible!!!

[deuteranope]

[He's distracted by the lizard for a while, so much that it actually overrides his annoyed disbelief at Kano keeping the book underneath the floorboard. He doesn't remember it being there the last time he was in...right? When did he get a lizard? He's not surprised by its presence, so obviously it was meant to be there, but ??????

Lizard...

When Kano approaches him with the book, he jumps a little attention snapping back.]

Uh?

[...Huh. So he did, sort of. But it's not a full page of blue text, and it's hard to see how Kano could be getting so excited about such a pathetic attempt.]

Would you settle down? Fuck. I told you it was going to be something like that, didn't I?

[suddenlybees]

[ It's a lizard...

And changing even some of the words to another color is a big deal to Kano, who takes the book back and replaces it back underneath the floorboards for safekeeping, because he was expecting absolutely no change at all and Maverick proved him wrong. ]

Yep, you did, and that's why it's so cool! You can do it at a distance, through walls and everything, and you don't even have to see it! How could I not be excited?!

[deuteranope]

Whatever.

[It...really feels like some joke he's just not getting. It was barely anything at all, whether it was at a distance or not, and what use could it possibly have? Especially unreliable as it is... He feels like the instant he dares to show any pride in stretching that weird magical muscle further than he has before, the world will flip rightside up again to show him how dumb it was.]

[suddenlybees]

He~h, are you embarrassed? I'm saying it's really cool, so at least pretend with me even if you wanna be modest about it!! Otherwise, I look ridiculous reacting like this by myself!

[ Maverick can't bring his excitement down, he's too hopeful now, hopping over onto and up onto the bed and sitting next to his lizard like he doesn't even see that it's there. ]

Is it just words? Or can you change the colors of other things? There's so much I wanna test out~

[deuteranope]

Maybe you look ridiculous because you are being ridiculous.

[But weirdly, that...does make him relax a little. Maybe because Kano's admitting that getting excited is the foolish thing to do? Or maybe it's how much he wants to believe that he thinks it's worth this reaction. "Really cool"... He doesn't get it at all.

At the question, he sighs and shifts his weight, then lifts up his shirt again as he changes the bright blue tattoos back to black.]

[suddenlybees]

[ If changing a couple of sentences in the book is "really cool," this is even better, the fact that Maverick can do more than just words. Symbols, or pictures, or shapes, maybe as long as it's been "written" in some way... he really wants to learn the rules about this magic, what a useful magic to have.

He's getting excited. This is great, but also very dangerous, getting excited. Where is his-- notebook, he takes it out of his pocket and quickly scribbles something on it and then turns it around to show Maverick. It's a complete mess of scribbles, like a tumbleweed. ]

How 'bout this? Can you change only parts of it and leave the rest? Maybe you can find a star in all the lines and change it to show that? You can see where I'm going with this, right, Mav?

[deuteranope]

[What a work of art...gosh. Still, surely even Kano would have let the joke drop by this point, right? Is he really this excited over it? He tries to push those thoughts aside -- they're really starting to get annoying -- and focuses in on the scribble. If Kano did put a star in there somewhere, after some scanning it will start to shift to be bright yellow. If not, a series of lines that are close enough do the same, and a smaller, near-perfectly rendered star shows up beneath it.]

It shocks me that you'd think anyone ever fucking sees where you're going. [Changing grades, he thinks, but he's not going to be the one to give Kano the idea if he wasn't thinking it already.]

[suddenlybees]

[ That certainly was one of the ideas Kano had entertained, but seeing the near-perfectly rendered star appear out of his mess, his plans are much larger than that. This'll work.

He flips the notebook shut. ]

Welcome to the Dan, member number six. I'm recruiting you, and you aren't allowed to refuse~

[deuteranope]

Fuck you, I refuse.

[he refuses on principle.]

What the fuck is that even supposed to mean?

[suddenlybees]

I just said you're not allowed to! You have to be number six!!

[ mostly bc I promised Tex that Nana would be seven and Kano has no other friends to make the numbers work ]