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xp_logsWhere do you look for a sixty-year-old woman in a twenty-year-old body with the ability to absorb the energy of cities? The clubbing district, of course.
Margali had always hated cities.
The smell, the traffic, the lack of space, buildings and roads and people surrounding you on all sides... she'd hated every moment she'd spent in a large city, loathed those times she'd had to stay in Berlin when trying to find her daughter. But now... The city thrilled her, filled her with such energy, such excitement. Bouyed by Amanda's mutation and the realisation that she was young again, young and free to do as she wished, Margali found herself standing by the window of her nondescript hotel room, fingers tapping out an impatient tattoo against her thigh.
She ought to stay where she was, continue as she had been, absorbing energy from the city, testing the body's limits, getting used to how it moved, how it processed magic. Preparing herself before she made her next move along the Winding Way, ensuring her own place among those with power. As she'd bargained for. She flexed her shoulders slightly, feeling the slight tightness of the scarring she'd discovered on her back - a channelling spell, something she hadn't anticipated (she'd felt a rush of protective anger, seeing the black jagged lines cut into the pale skin, and turned away from the mirror at once). Something she ought to study it further, to see if it was a weakness. But the streets called to her, invited her to join them, and she felt something she hadn't since she'd been a girl younger than Amanda, running wild and unfettered through the woods.
She hesitated just a few moments more, then turned abruptly from the window, collecting the jacket she'd found herself wearing. There was time at least for her to a little fun.
***
The energy of the place was palpable, a living entity almost. A crush of bodies, music pounding so loud you could feel it vibrating through your body, a superfast blend of techno and industrial that set the pulse racing. Margali stood in the middle of the club, revelling in it and at the same time wondering why. The situation, the noise, the atmosphere... it was completely alien to her, everything she hated and yet she'd never felt so alive. Energy coursed through the body - no, her body now, she'd claimed what was hers by right - setting her mind on fire in a way she hadn't felt since... since ever. With a whoop, Margali threw herself into the crush, her movements still slightly clumsy as she gave herself up to the moment.
Among the crush of bodies, no one took notice of one figure slipping towards the back wall, using the movement of the crowd against itself. Wanda slid in between couples, ignored heated looks and offers for a drink--thinking that it was a wonder Mark ever got any work done--all the way attempting to keep an eye on Margali. It was hard as Amanda's body blended right in with the age group that flocked to the place they were in but the slightly stilted movements helped a little bit. With a grunt, she let herself be swept a few more feet back until her shoulder bumped against the wall.
She groped along the cement for a second and then paused, waiting. The chance came when the song ended but a small tussle at the front began, drawing attention away from her. Wanda smiled tightly, finally spotting Margali again and curled her fingers--ones that did not belong to her--around the fire alarm and yanked.
Mark in Kurt's body had climbed up to upper rail platform above the dancefloor, which was just as packed as the floor itself. He'd clearly spotted Margali-as-Amanda from the better vantage point, and forced himself to remain calm. His fingers twitched with every beat of the bass. It almost hurt not to be able to draw in the energy of the music and the club, to weave it into tangible force that he could manipulate. All he could do was wait for the signal and hopefully access Kurt's mutation with enough skill to teleport into the ensuing fray and reclaim his body from Wanda.
As the fire alarm went off, the club erupted into panic. Screams and shouts, not enough to drown out the music but still audible, added to the din as clubgoers began fighting for the exits. The bouncers tried to maintain calm, but the club was over-crowded as it was, and most of the clientele on something or other and no-one was listening. As the crowd spilled outside, Marie-Ange pulled herself away from the bouncer at the front door, giving him a sad little pout. "I think you have to go tend to the fire alarm and crowd, yes?" She asked, eyes wide. "That is a shame." She'd bought them enough time to get in without the bouncer noticing the most distinctive member of the group, and without getting a good look at any of the rest either. As the bouncer turned to direct the fleeing dancers, Marie-Ange stepped behind him and ran for the side exit. There would be less people there, she hoped, and it would be easier to get inside.
Margali, buffeted from side to side by people, glanced around sharply. Something was wrong, something was... Abruptly she clapped her hands together, producing the shielding spell and creating a small bubble of calm in the midst of the melee. "~Show yourself!~" she shouted in Romani, turning a circle as she tried to catch sight of her attackers. "~Come out and fight!~"
"~If you insist,~" Doug murmured, stepping out of the mad flow of clubbers rushing for the exit as easily as if he had stepped off of the curb. "I think you'll find us a bit harder prey than last time," he told the woman inhabiting his friend's body.
"You people, you do not give up, do you?" Margali's accented English sounded odd coming out of Amanda's throat. "I have merely taken back what was stolen from me. This is none of your concern. Go home." She punctuated the words with a gesture at the floor, and ripples of concrete and asphalt erupted from the wooden floor. "In this place, with the magic of the clan reclaimed, you cannot hope to beat me."
Kurt stepped forward, awkwardly in the still-unfamiliar body, and looked down at her. "Margali, she will die. And whatever you think, she is Gemile. Do you care nothing for that?"
"Care for a stranger who stole my daughter's name and face, stole my people's inheritance?" Margali's lip curled. "Gemile is already dead. She died back when that monster stole her."
"No, she did not but have you thought about the fact that you are killing your daughter? The memories you have and her and the same time?" Wanda appeared on the side, trying to avoid the flying chunks of floor and not trip over her own feet. Her sense of balance was distorted but they had to work through that. The shift and change in powers was what really threw her for a loop--she was more than well-disciplined in using them but Mark had a different power and it was varied.
And came with a funny little iPod thing.
"Get back!" The shielding spell was already roiling with neon colours, shades of stone from the buildings, metal from fences and gates and barriers. Now it pulsed as Margali pushed her arms out to her sides, expanding the bubble and shoving aside anyone who might be in her way.
That was Mark's cue. He screwed his eyes shut and concentrated on the space right behind Margali. "Comeoncomeoncomeon," he muttered frantically. The bubble grew and would have knocked Mark off the platform, but in that instant he disappeared in a cloud of sulfur, reappearing just inches behind Margali within the confines of the shield. "Boo, mother fucker," he rasped. Or would have, if he'd maintained any semblance of balance during the teleportation and hadn't tripped over his own tail.
Still, the surprise of having her foster son's body - even if Kurt wasn't in residence - was enough to startle Margali enough that she lost the concentration she needed for the shielding spell. The bubble of light winked out and she spun around, instinctively flinging her hands up. Energy crackled ominously at her fingertips. "You dare?!"
"You had not figured that out already?" Marie-Ange pushed through the last of the fleeing crowd. "Did you think we were just going to lie down and let you kill our friend?" She glanced down at the card in her hand, and then at the front doors, where a wall built itself up, blocking the exit. She could block this one herself. Margali in Amanda's body wouldn't put up much of a physical fight.
"We dare plenty," Doug chimed in as well, darting forward. Much like any D&D spellcaster, Amanda needed her concentration intact in order to spellcast. Doug was praying that still held true even with Margali calling the shots in Amanda's body. He ducked around one of the straggling clubbers still running for the exit, using the boy's body to shield his movements until the very last second, when he popped up in front of Margali. He slapped her arm away as it shifted toward him, and a ray of the crackling energy discharged harmlessly off to one side. Doug winced a bit internally and mentally apologized to Amanda for the punishment her body was likely to go through. Then, after that brief hesitation, he drove his knee into her belly.
As Margali stumbled backwards, the spells around her flickered as her concentration wavered, Wanda kept dodging the club goers and tried to get closer. It was tricky and even more so when she noticed the slight sparks of electricity around her arms. "Fantastic," she sighed, shaking her hands in irritation. But it gave her an idea. She dug through Mark's pocket and pulled out his iPod, smashing the button to try and turn it on. "Mark, how do I turn this bloody thing on?" she shouted over the noise of the crowd.
"Press the button!" he shouted back. As if it were rocket science. He pulled himself back to his feet and crouched, the awkward position actually more comfortable than standing up straight.
"I am pressing the button!"
"Unlock it, then press the button! Then fucking zap the bitch!"
It was locked? Who made this stupid thing? "Oh, forget it!" Wanda gave up and shoved the iPod back where it had been. Two more steps and she was connecting her fist with what should have been Amanda's jaw. "You know," she said, looking down at Mark's hand with interest, "Amanda would have dodged that."
Margali was rocked by the punch, her hand coming up to her jaw. "You struck me?" she exclaimed, as if she couldn't really believe it. She couldn't - no-one had dared raise her hand to her in years, not since she was a girl, living under her father's rule... She reacted instinctively then, reaching for the nearest available spell. Air - a great gust of cold, gritty wind erupted from her, pummelling anyone in front of her.
Good thing Mark was behind her. Hoping he could keep standing without falling over again, he clenched a three-fingered fist and punched Margali in the back near the kidneys, wincing as he came into contact with Amanda's - his friend's - flesh. "That wasn't nearly as fun as it looked, you skank."
Margali gasped, staggering again. How was this happening? She had all the power of Berlin at her disposal, magical knowledge from generations of witches, plus the new spells she'd acquired... Why weren't these people bowing down before her? She groped for another spell, the pain in her jaw and back a constant distraction that she fought to ignore. She was Szardos, what was pain to her?
The air around her got ominously hot, and then flames - the smoky yellow of coal-burning power stations - crackled into life around her.
Kurt stepped forward, carefully, taking note of the chaos strings that he'd realized must be how Wanda's power worked. The fire alarm had given him an idea, and he looked to the ceiling, following the lines to... there.
"Wanda, please put the iPod in your pocket", he said calmly, and gave her a moment to obey before he focused and tugged all the strings connected to the sprinklers. Not much finesse, maybe, but it was the best he could do.
As the water sprinklers exploded, Wanda couldn't help a grin as the flames started to sputter and die out. "Magical or not, fire is fire," she murmured, stumbling up again from where the wind had knocked her flat on her butt. The DJ--the other one and not theirs--had fled with the rest of the crowd but had left the music playing and it was coursing through her again. This time she welcomed it, feeling the beat and rhythm and the crackling of electricity running up and down her arms.
It took a different kind of concentration to be able to focus it and it was done clumsily but the end result was still a flash of electricity right around Margali's feet.
Margali let out a yelp, skipping back. Out-numbered, she was out-numbered and she'd wasted too much time, too much power on these fools. She tried to drag up the power for a teleport, but even this body, young and strong, had its limits. Instead she conjured up the shield again, using it as a battering ram as she fled for the door, the spell lasting only long enough to get past those surrounding her.
Doug had been blown back by the gust of wind Margali had summoned, and wound up between her and the door. This left him in a perfect position, as Margali attempted to flee, to take a few quick running steps before sliding like a baseball player and scissoring his legs at her ankles and the backs of her knees. Her momentum kept moving the rest of her body forward to land in a tangled sprawl at Marie-Ange's feet right in front of the door.
Pain jarred up Margali's legs as her knees hit the floor. Looking up at the red-haired French girl, she rasped out: "This isn't how it was supposed to be. All this power, it was going to take me higher on the Way. I was promised that it would. How is it you are stopping me?"
Marie-Ange didn't bother to answer. Instead she threw out her arms, shoving Margali away and knocking her fully to the floor. She'd had more then enough of this, and risking Margali casting another spell in an attempt to slip away was just too risky. Despite the feeble protests and hands clawing at her wrists, Marie-Ange grabbed Margali's shoulders, pulled up and then let go, bouncing the woman's head off the ground. "Someone please remind me to apologize to Amanda later?"
Margali had always hated cities.
The smell, the traffic, the lack of space, buildings and roads and people surrounding you on all sides... she'd hated every moment she'd spent in a large city, loathed those times she'd had to stay in Berlin when trying to find her daughter. But now... The city thrilled her, filled her with such energy, such excitement. Bouyed by Amanda's mutation and the realisation that she was young again, young and free to do as she wished, Margali found herself standing by the window of her nondescript hotel room, fingers tapping out an impatient tattoo against her thigh.
She ought to stay where she was, continue as she had been, absorbing energy from the city, testing the body's limits, getting used to how it moved, how it processed magic. Preparing herself before she made her next move along the Winding Way, ensuring her own place among those with power. As she'd bargained for. She flexed her shoulders slightly, feeling the slight tightness of the scarring she'd discovered on her back - a channelling spell, something she hadn't anticipated (she'd felt a rush of protective anger, seeing the black jagged lines cut into the pale skin, and turned away from the mirror at once). Something she ought to study it further, to see if it was a weakness. But the streets called to her, invited her to join them, and she felt something she hadn't since she'd been a girl younger than Amanda, running wild and unfettered through the woods.
She hesitated just a few moments more, then turned abruptly from the window, collecting the jacket she'd found herself wearing. There was time at least for her to a little fun.
***
The energy of the place was palpable, a living entity almost. A crush of bodies, music pounding so loud you could feel it vibrating through your body, a superfast blend of techno and industrial that set the pulse racing. Margali stood in the middle of the club, revelling in it and at the same time wondering why. The situation, the noise, the atmosphere... it was completely alien to her, everything she hated and yet she'd never felt so alive. Energy coursed through the body - no, her body now, she'd claimed what was hers by right - setting her mind on fire in a way she hadn't felt since... since ever. With a whoop, Margali threw herself into the crush, her movements still slightly clumsy as she gave herself up to the moment.
Among the crush of bodies, no one took notice of one figure slipping towards the back wall, using the movement of the crowd against itself. Wanda slid in between couples, ignored heated looks and offers for a drink--thinking that it was a wonder Mark ever got any work done--all the way attempting to keep an eye on Margali. It was hard as Amanda's body blended right in with the age group that flocked to the place they were in but the slightly stilted movements helped a little bit. With a grunt, she let herself be swept a few more feet back until her shoulder bumped against the wall.
She groped along the cement for a second and then paused, waiting. The chance came when the song ended but a small tussle at the front began, drawing attention away from her. Wanda smiled tightly, finally spotting Margali again and curled her fingers--ones that did not belong to her--around the fire alarm and yanked.
Mark in Kurt's body had climbed up to upper rail platform above the dancefloor, which was just as packed as the floor itself. He'd clearly spotted Margali-as-Amanda from the better vantage point, and forced himself to remain calm. His fingers twitched with every beat of the bass. It almost hurt not to be able to draw in the energy of the music and the club, to weave it into tangible force that he could manipulate. All he could do was wait for the signal and hopefully access Kurt's mutation with enough skill to teleport into the ensuing fray and reclaim his body from Wanda.
As the fire alarm went off, the club erupted into panic. Screams and shouts, not enough to drown out the music but still audible, added to the din as clubgoers began fighting for the exits. The bouncers tried to maintain calm, but the club was over-crowded as it was, and most of the clientele on something or other and no-one was listening. As the crowd spilled outside, Marie-Ange pulled herself away from the bouncer at the front door, giving him a sad little pout. "I think you have to go tend to the fire alarm and crowd, yes?" She asked, eyes wide. "That is a shame." She'd bought them enough time to get in without the bouncer noticing the most distinctive member of the group, and without getting a good look at any of the rest either. As the bouncer turned to direct the fleeing dancers, Marie-Ange stepped behind him and ran for the side exit. There would be less people there, she hoped, and it would be easier to get inside.
Margali, buffeted from side to side by people, glanced around sharply. Something was wrong, something was... Abruptly she clapped her hands together, producing the shielding spell and creating a small bubble of calm in the midst of the melee. "~Show yourself!~" she shouted in Romani, turning a circle as she tried to catch sight of her attackers. "~Come out and fight!~"
"~If you insist,~" Doug murmured, stepping out of the mad flow of clubbers rushing for the exit as easily as if he had stepped off of the curb. "I think you'll find us a bit harder prey than last time," he told the woman inhabiting his friend's body.
"You people, you do not give up, do you?" Margali's accented English sounded odd coming out of Amanda's throat. "I have merely taken back what was stolen from me. This is none of your concern. Go home." She punctuated the words with a gesture at the floor, and ripples of concrete and asphalt erupted from the wooden floor. "In this place, with the magic of the clan reclaimed, you cannot hope to beat me."
Kurt stepped forward, awkwardly in the still-unfamiliar body, and looked down at her. "Margali, she will die. And whatever you think, she is Gemile. Do you care nothing for that?"
"Care for a stranger who stole my daughter's name and face, stole my people's inheritance?" Margali's lip curled. "Gemile is already dead. She died back when that monster stole her."
"No, she did not but have you thought about the fact that you are killing your daughter? The memories you have and her and the same time?" Wanda appeared on the side, trying to avoid the flying chunks of floor and not trip over her own feet. Her sense of balance was distorted but they had to work through that. The shift and change in powers was what really threw her for a loop--she was more than well-disciplined in using them but Mark had a different power and it was varied.
And came with a funny little iPod thing.
"Get back!" The shielding spell was already roiling with neon colours, shades of stone from the buildings, metal from fences and gates and barriers. Now it pulsed as Margali pushed her arms out to her sides, expanding the bubble and shoving aside anyone who might be in her way.
That was Mark's cue. He screwed his eyes shut and concentrated on the space right behind Margali. "Comeoncomeoncomeon," he muttered frantically. The bubble grew and would have knocked Mark off the platform, but in that instant he disappeared in a cloud of sulfur, reappearing just inches behind Margali within the confines of the shield. "Boo, mother fucker," he rasped. Or would have, if he'd maintained any semblance of balance during the teleportation and hadn't tripped over his own tail.
Still, the surprise of having her foster son's body - even if Kurt wasn't in residence - was enough to startle Margali enough that she lost the concentration she needed for the shielding spell. The bubble of light winked out and she spun around, instinctively flinging her hands up. Energy crackled ominously at her fingertips. "You dare?!"
"You had not figured that out already?" Marie-Ange pushed through the last of the fleeing crowd. "Did you think we were just going to lie down and let you kill our friend?" She glanced down at the card in her hand, and then at the front doors, where a wall built itself up, blocking the exit. She could block this one herself. Margali in Amanda's body wouldn't put up much of a physical fight.
"We dare plenty," Doug chimed in as well, darting forward. Much like any D&D spellcaster, Amanda needed her concentration intact in order to spellcast. Doug was praying that still held true even with Margali calling the shots in Amanda's body. He ducked around one of the straggling clubbers still running for the exit, using the boy's body to shield his movements until the very last second, when he popped up in front of Margali. He slapped her arm away as it shifted toward him, and a ray of the crackling energy discharged harmlessly off to one side. Doug winced a bit internally and mentally apologized to Amanda for the punishment her body was likely to go through. Then, after that brief hesitation, he drove his knee into her belly.
As Margali stumbled backwards, the spells around her flickered as her concentration wavered, Wanda kept dodging the club goers and tried to get closer. It was tricky and even more so when she noticed the slight sparks of electricity around her arms. "Fantastic," she sighed, shaking her hands in irritation. But it gave her an idea. She dug through Mark's pocket and pulled out his iPod, smashing the button to try and turn it on. "Mark, how do I turn this bloody thing on?" she shouted over the noise of the crowd.
"Press the button!" he shouted back. As if it were rocket science. He pulled himself back to his feet and crouched, the awkward position actually more comfortable than standing up straight.
"I am pressing the button!"
"Unlock it, then press the button! Then fucking zap the bitch!"
It was locked? Who made this stupid thing? "Oh, forget it!" Wanda gave up and shoved the iPod back where it had been. Two more steps and she was connecting her fist with what should have been Amanda's jaw. "You know," she said, looking down at Mark's hand with interest, "Amanda would have dodged that."
Margali was rocked by the punch, her hand coming up to her jaw. "You struck me?" she exclaimed, as if she couldn't really believe it. She couldn't - no-one had dared raise her hand to her in years, not since she was a girl, living under her father's rule... She reacted instinctively then, reaching for the nearest available spell. Air - a great gust of cold, gritty wind erupted from her, pummelling anyone in front of her.
Good thing Mark was behind her. Hoping he could keep standing without falling over again, he clenched a three-fingered fist and punched Margali in the back near the kidneys, wincing as he came into contact with Amanda's - his friend's - flesh. "That wasn't nearly as fun as it looked, you skank."
Margali gasped, staggering again. How was this happening? She had all the power of Berlin at her disposal, magical knowledge from generations of witches, plus the new spells she'd acquired... Why weren't these people bowing down before her? She groped for another spell, the pain in her jaw and back a constant distraction that she fought to ignore. She was Szardos, what was pain to her?
The air around her got ominously hot, and then flames - the smoky yellow of coal-burning power stations - crackled into life around her.
Kurt stepped forward, carefully, taking note of the chaos strings that he'd realized must be how Wanda's power worked. The fire alarm had given him an idea, and he looked to the ceiling, following the lines to... there.
"Wanda, please put the iPod in your pocket", he said calmly, and gave her a moment to obey before he focused and tugged all the strings connected to the sprinklers. Not much finesse, maybe, but it was the best he could do.
As the water sprinklers exploded, Wanda couldn't help a grin as the flames started to sputter and die out. "Magical or not, fire is fire," she murmured, stumbling up again from where the wind had knocked her flat on her butt. The DJ--the other one and not theirs--had fled with the rest of the crowd but had left the music playing and it was coursing through her again. This time she welcomed it, feeling the beat and rhythm and the crackling of electricity running up and down her arms.
It took a different kind of concentration to be able to focus it and it was done clumsily but the end result was still a flash of electricity right around Margali's feet.
Margali let out a yelp, skipping back. Out-numbered, she was out-numbered and she'd wasted too much time, too much power on these fools. She tried to drag up the power for a teleport, but even this body, young and strong, had its limits. Instead she conjured up the shield again, using it as a battering ram as she fled for the door, the spell lasting only long enough to get past those surrounding her.
Doug had been blown back by the gust of wind Margali had summoned, and wound up between her and the door. This left him in a perfect position, as Margali attempted to flee, to take a few quick running steps before sliding like a baseball player and scissoring his legs at her ankles and the backs of her knees. Her momentum kept moving the rest of her body forward to land in a tangled sprawl at Marie-Ange's feet right in front of the door.
Pain jarred up Margali's legs as her knees hit the floor. Looking up at the red-haired French girl, she rasped out: "This isn't how it was supposed to be. All this power, it was going to take me higher on the Way. I was promised that it would. How is it you are stopping me?"
Marie-Ange didn't bother to answer. Instead she threw out her arms, shoving Margali away and knocking her fully to the floor. She'd had more then enough of this, and risking Margali casting another spell in an attempt to slip away was just too risky. Despite the feeble protests and hands clawing at her wrists, Marie-Ange grabbed Margali's shoulders, pulled up and then let go, bouncing the woman's head off the ground. "Someone please remind me to apologize to Amanda later?"
