Amanda and Nico - Great Responsibility
Nov. 2nd, 2009 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsMaking good on the threat promise in this thread, Amanda seeks out a certain witchling to talk to her about Halloween.
It had been the kitchen for her, and now Nico was fighting the urge or not getting close to her room, since that would only cause her remorse for ignoring her homework, which she was so not doing. All on all, school seemed to be fairly enjoyable - scratch that, bearable was a far better word - having unique and interesting class mates and teachers - something she had never thought a teacher could be - making things a little bit easier for her. The fact she hated it was there though, and the sole idea of keep on studying after that was, at least for the moment, out of the equation. It was these thoughts that didn't prevent her of bumping into a blond she had not seen much around... not that she could forget her, anyway.
"A-Amanda? You really wanted to talk, didn't you?" Well, feeling bad about not studying would need to wait then.
"Yeah, I really did." The Brit was dressed for the office - she hadn't had time to change before picking up Valentia to bring her back to the mansion and her brother's care - and the charcoal-grey suit gave her an air of maturity that perhaps ripped jeans and a band t-shirt might not have. Despite that, her manner was more concerned than outright angry. "We probably ought to have some privacy for this. C'mon, one of the classrooms should do."
There was this very small twitch of protest when Nico heard the word classroom, but she didn't go further, and simply followed her. "Am I... in trouble? Animating decorations wasn't a good idea?" She was trying to figure out whether she was about to deal with an angry witch and most likely end in a bubble - if not turned into a frog - or if Amanda would take a less violent approach. "Should I do some laps around the Mansion as punishment?" For some reason, Nico's usual overly mature demeanor was cracking, but she couldn't just tell why.
Amanda waited until they'd reached one of the empty classrooms. Waving at the desks for Nico to take a seat, she closed the door - there was no such thing as privacy in the mansion and she wanted to be able to talk to the girl frankly. Grabbing a chair from another desk, she sat down opposite Nico, looking over the girl before she spoke. Fuck me, it's like looking in a mirror back to my school days, she thought. How did Strange deal with me? Except in these situations, it hadn't been Strange. It had been someone else.
"Back when I first got here, I turned the guidance counsellor into a frog," she began. "It wasn't meant to happen - I was pissed off and he annoyed me, so I tried the spell, just to scare him. Only he was a shapeshifter with control issues, so blow me down if it didn't actually work. It took ages to get him to switch back again and I got stuck doing the mansion's dishes for a week." She paused. "No-one got hurt, it was just a laugh, or so I thought at the time. But then someone got me thinking about how the guidance counsellor felt, having that happen to him. I hadn't been thinking of it at the time. All I was thinking was that I wanted to scare him, make him take me seriously."
She had almost protested, tried to say she never intended to scare anyone - okay, it was Halloween, so scaring people was the idea, but not in an unhealthy way - but Nico did manage to get the meaning of it. She seemed to become certainly more serious then, although she couldn't hide entirely that the idea of turning Adrienne, who she saw as the person she could probably go and look for a talk, into a frog, just for the laughs, and only if she was pissed, or something...
Oh, so that was the point.
"Having the power to do something doesn't mean you must do it if you can, right?" Resting her head on her palms, Nico was starting to taste the guilt, not only of what happened on Halloween, but of what usually crossed her mind. "Every now and then... thoughts come to me, of what I could do, if I really wanted. Some are good thoughts, you know? Helping people isn't such a bad thing, but some others..." Some others were anything but good, or harmless. "If magic is like, the ultimate multi uses tool, there should be an instructions manual, or at least a ...For Dummies book in every bookstore."
"That's pretty much it, yeah. Magic... it's not like a mutant power. I remember, when I was here, how unfair I thought it all was. They got to use their powers to make their lives easier all the time. They played pranks, or used them to have fun, all that. But I couldn't do that." Amanda was pleased at how quickly Nico had picked up the lesson - the same lesson Pete had taught her. "Magic's different, Nico. It comes from outside of us, uses us as the vehicle. Which means we have to be more careful about what we do with it. It's so bloody easy for things to go wrong." A thought hit her. "It's like a car, yeah? Sure, when you're driving, you're controlling where it's going, but if you stop paying attention, or decide to swerve around 'cause it's fun, well, that's when things get out of control and sometimes you can't always fix it."
Well now, if she was getting it all clear, magic seemed to lose some of its appeal. It was, apparently, not a thing about being moderate with it, but knowing when to use it. A part of her was really not pleased to know this, and Nico decided to work on quietly killing that part of her from now on. "Is it crazy to wish I were a mutant and not... magical? Or, heck, wouldn't it be easier if there wasn't magic and mutants and everyone were boring and common? What's the point of something being there, if it will either be used to potentially kill or cause problems?" A heavy sigh followed; there was no point on voicing something like that, because there wasn't really much of an answer, or a successful one at least. "Even if I know all the rules of driving, I would feel really tempted to run over one or two people from time to time."
"Magic's there because something wants it to be there," Amanda said simply. "And it does have its uses, same as a car. It's just a matter of deciding whether it's worth the cost in petrol and parking to use it." She grimaced a little. "Okay, the car metaphor's getting a little extreme. But I do get it, Nico. It's going to be frustrating as hell for a while, because you're surrounded by people who can do all sorts of things... and apparently without a bunch of rules holding them back. But you're in the best place you could be in - that staff of yours saw to that, didn't it?" She smiled at the student. "For one, you've got yourself a cranky magical teacher, yeah?"
It was, at best, complicated not to smile back. "I really did think you would be trying to make me learn through fearless and dangerous act of badassery, so you can forgive yourself on the cranky part...for now." Yes, it was complicated, and certainly less tempting than just being able to set things on fire, or move things with one's mind, but Nico would be lying to herself if she didn't accept she found magic appealing. Lifting her head from her hands, the girl frowned a little. "This staff of mine wants things on its own, or something like that I guess. While I think it doesn't go as far as saying it has a mind and everything, it did take the decision for me, and it does understand what I want when I use it. That's a little creepy." There was also the fact the Staff of One seemed to like the outside world, and some nights it would bother her until she bit a finger and summoned it, or that the staff seemed always too cold, or just plain scary to even her at times. She didn't voice those concerns though, since Nico considered them to be the kind of stuff you deal with alone, or at least for now. No need to freak Amanda when they seemed to be getting along rather nicely.
Tilting her head to a side, Nico let go what she had wanted to tell her the first time they met, but didn't because it sounded way too stupid at that time. "Teach me? Please? There must be books to read, or anything related to learning magic right? It might sound stupid, but I would like to make magic without the Staff of One...I sometimes feel like cheating."
"The less you use that staff of yours, the better, I think," Amanda agreed. "Magical artefacts... well, let's just say they tend to have fine print a lot of the time, and anything that demands a blood sacrifice to use it isn't all puppies and rainbows. You've got the power for sure, tho', and you need to learn how to use it. So yeah, I'll teach you. And when I'm not around, since my job tends to drag me off to the ends of the earth a lot, I know just the person to step in for me." Her grin was frankly mischievous and made her look almost as young as the confused girl in front of her. "He's the one that taught me, after all."
Blood offerings were bad, Nico knew that even if she didn't know why, but then again, there were even movies about it right? Drop some blood, summon a demon...and she had heard about demons in the school before. "What kind of job is that? Do me a big favor and don't answer if you also dress up and save innocent people from giant robots." After realizing half the adults on the mansion were super heroes, and that the other half (save Cammie, apparently) wanted to be just like them, Nico almost wished Amanda had some boring job, but nooo, a witch couldn't probably do something less interesting than the folks at Xavier's. Without noticing, she almost asked Amanda to take her on a trip somewhere, but her ideas were cut when she mentioned a supposed substitute teacher for those times when she would be...busy.
Somehow, it shouldn't surprise her to know that magic wasn't a thing of only four people, but it did none the less. "You seem to have very, eh, fond memories of such a devoted, patient, kind and trustworthy person, right?"
"I'm a research assistant with a mutant think tank," Amanda explained with a slight twinkle in her eyes. "Plus I'm involved in a sort of occult network - world-wide magical research to keep an eye on things, mainly. So yeah, lots of travelling, but not so much with the dressing up in leather and giant robots." The finer details of the Trenchcoats would keep. "As for Strange - Doctor Stephen Strange, that is - he's a good sort. A bit of a stuffed shirt sometimes and not always comfortable with teenage girls with attitude, but he won't steer you wrong."
"The... this Brownstone thing right? It sounds fishy, but then again, there is a jet under the basketball court." The occult network magical thingy did rise a flag for Nico, but truly, she wouldn't understand a thing even if she asked, so it would be better to keep it for later. And then, the unexpected; Nico covered her mouth with both hands, laugh barely contained as she tried to relax herself. "Really now...", more laughter, "Strange? Dr.Stange, the wizard? This is just way too good to be truth." As long as the guy taught her something, it was all OK with her, even though she preferred Amanda already; it was odd, but she sensed they were similar in ways she still didn't know how to describe. More creepy stuff for sure. "I don't mind him being...uptight, but I fear I might laugh in his face when I meet him."
Amanda's grin turned wicked. "That's what I'm kind of counting on. A bit of humility's good for the soul, or so I'm told." She stretched her hands above her head, straightening out her back. "All right, I need to move around a bit. You up for a trip into Salem Center for a coffee or something? I can take us on my Broomstick."
"Should I laugh...or be all serious; a broomstick? Are we talking about the real thing? Bewitched-like? Besides that, I'm more than willing to get out of here for a while." Still, the image of Amanda, or rather, a mixed Samantha-Amanda (Samanda? Amantha?) flying in a broomstick was going to leave a mental scar, she just knew it.
The Brit tried to look mysterious, although it was hard with laughter bubbling up. "Patience, young apprentice. All will be revealed. Let us away to the house of vehicles!" She said it with a dramatic flourish that wouldn't have looked out of place on a stage.
It had been the kitchen for her, and now Nico was fighting the urge or not getting close to her room, since that would only cause her remorse for ignoring her homework, which she was so not doing. All on all, school seemed to be fairly enjoyable - scratch that, bearable was a far better word - having unique and interesting class mates and teachers - something she had never thought a teacher could be - making things a little bit easier for her. The fact she hated it was there though, and the sole idea of keep on studying after that was, at least for the moment, out of the equation. It was these thoughts that didn't prevent her of bumping into a blond she had not seen much around... not that she could forget her, anyway.
"A-Amanda? You really wanted to talk, didn't you?" Well, feeling bad about not studying would need to wait then.
"Yeah, I really did." The Brit was dressed for the office - she hadn't had time to change before picking up Valentia to bring her back to the mansion and her brother's care - and the charcoal-grey suit gave her an air of maturity that perhaps ripped jeans and a band t-shirt might not have. Despite that, her manner was more concerned than outright angry. "We probably ought to have some privacy for this. C'mon, one of the classrooms should do."
There was this very small twitch of protest when Nico heard the word classroom, but she didn't go further, and simply followed her. "Am I... in trouble? Animating decorations wasn't a good idea?" She was trying to figure out whether she was about to deal with an angry witch and most likely end in a bubble - if not turned into a frog - or if Amanda would take a less violent approach. "Should I do some laps around the Mansion as punishment?" For some reason, Nico's usual overly mature demeanor was cracking, but she couldn't just tell why.
Amanda waited until they'd reached one of the empty classrooms. Waving at the desks for Nico to take a seat, she closed the door - there was no such thing as privacy in the mansion and she wanted to be able to talk to the girl frankly. Grabbing a chair from another desk, she sat down opposite Nico, looking over the girl before she spoke. Fuck me, it's like looking in a mirror back to my school days, she thought. How did Strange deal with me? Except in these situations, it hadn't been Strange. It had been someone else.
"Back when I first got here, I turned the guidance counsellor into a frog," she began. "It wasn't meant to happen - I was pissed off and he annoyed me, so I tried the spell, just to scare him. Only he was a shapeshifter with control issues, so blow me down if it didn't actually work. It took ages to get him to switch back again and I got stuck doing the mansion's dishes for a week." She paused. "No-one got hurt, it was just a laugh, or so I thought at the time. But then someone got me thinking about how the guidance counsellor felt, having that happen to him. I hadn't been thinking of it at the time. All I was thinking was that I wanted to scare him, make him take me seriously."
She had almost protested, tried to say she never intended to scare anyone - okay, it was Halloween, so scaring people was the idea, but not in an unhealthy way - but Nico did manage to get the meaning of it. She seemed to become certainly more serious then, although she couldn't hide entirely that the idea of turning Adrienne, who she saw as the person she could probably go and look for a talk, into a frog, just for the laughs, and only if she was pissed, or something...
Oh, so that was the point.
"Having the power to do something doesn't mean you must do it if you can, right?" Resting her head on her palms, Nico was starting to taste the guilt, not only of what happened on Halloween, but of what usually crossed her mind. "Every now and then... thoughts come to me, of what I could do, if I really wanted. Some are good thoughts, you know? Helping people isn't such a bad thing, but some others..." Some others were anything but good, or harmless. "If magic is like, the ultimate multi uses tool, there should be an instructions manual, or at least a ...For Dummies book in every bookstore."
"That's pretty much it, yeah. Magic... it's not like a mutant power. I remember, when I was here, how unfair I thought it all was. They got to use their powers to make their lives easier all the time. They played pranks, or used them to have fun, all that. But I couldn't do that." Amanda was pleased at how quickly Nico had picked up the lesson - the same lesson Pete had taught her. "Magic's different, Nico. It comes from outside of us, uses us as the vehicle. Which means we have to be more careful about what we do with it. It's so bloody easy for things to go wrong." A thought hit her. "It's like a car, yeah? Sure, when you're driving, you're controlling where it's going, but if you stop paying attention, or decide to swerve around 'cause it's fun, well, that's when things get out of control and sometimes you can't always fix it."
Well now, if she was getting it all clear, magic seemed to lose some of its appeal. It was, apparently, not a thing about being moderate with it, but knowing when to use it. A part of her was really not pleased to know this, and Nico decided to work on quietly killing that part of her from now on. "Is it crazy to wish I were a mutant and not... magical? Or, heck, wouldn't it be easier if there wasn't magic and mutants and everyone were boring and common? What's the point of something being there, if it will either be used to potentially kill or cause problems?" A heavy sigh followed; there was no point on voicing something like that, because there wasn't really much of an answer, or a successful one at least. "Even if I know all the rules of driving, I would feel really tempted to run over one or two people from time to time."
"Magic's there because something wants it to be there," Amanda said simply. "And it does have its uses, same as a car. It's just a matter of deciding whether it's worth the cost in petrol and parking to use it." She grimaced a little. "Okay, the car metaphor's getting a little extreme. But I do get it, Nico. It's going to be frustrating as hell for a while, because you're surrounded by people who can do all sorts of things... and apparently without a bunch of rules holding them back. But you're in the best place you could be in - that staff of yours saw to that, didn't it?" She smiled at the student. "For one, you've got yourself a cranky magical teacher, yeah?"
It was, at best, complicated not to smile back. "I really did think you would be trying to make me learn through fearless and dangerous act of badassery, so you can forgive yourself on the cranky part...for now." Yes, it was complicated, and certainly less tempting than just being able to set things on fire, or move things with one's mind, but Nico would be lying to herself if she didn't accept she found magic appealing. Lifting her head from her hands, the girl frowned a little. "This staff of mine wants things on its own, or something like that I guess. While I think it doesn't go as far as saying it has a mind and everything, it did take the decision for me, and it does understand what I want when I use it. That's a little creepy." There was also the fact the Staff of One seemed to like the outside world, and some nights it would bother her until she bit a finger and summoned it, or that the staff seemed always too cold, or just plain scary to even her at times. She didn't voice those concerns though, since Nico considered them to be the kind of stuff you deal with alone, or at least for now. No need to freak Amanda when they seemed to be getting along rather nicely.
Tilting her head to a side, Nico let go what she had wanted to tell her the first time they met, but didn't because it sounded way too stupid at that time. "Teach me? Please? There must be books to read, or anything related to learning magic right? It might sound stupid, but I would like to make magic without the Staff of One...I sometimes feel like cheating."
"The less you use that staff of yours, the better, I think," Amanda agreed. "Magical artefacts... well, let's just say they tend to have fine print a lot of the time, and anything that demands a blood sacrifice to use it isn't all puppies and rainbows. You've got the power for sure, tho', and you need to learn how to use it. So yeah, I'll teach you. And when I'm not around, since my job tends to drag me off to the ends of the earth a lot, I know just the person to step in for me." Her grin was frankly mischievous and made her look almost as young as the confused girl in front of her. "He's the one that taught me, after all."
Blood offerings were bad, Nico knew that even if she didn't know why, but then again, there were even movies about it right? Drop some blood, summon a demon...and she had heard about demons in the school before. "What kind of job is that? Do me a big favor and don't answer if you also dress up and save innocent people from giant robots." After realizing half the adults on the mansion were super heroes, and that the other half (save Cammie, apparently) wanted to be just like them, Nico almost wished Amanda had some boring job, but nooo, a witch couldn't probably do something less interesting than the folks at Xavier's. Without noticing, she almost asked Amanda to take her on a trip somewhere, but her ideas were cut when she mentioned a supposed substitute teacher for those times when she would be...busy.
Somehow, it shouldn't surprise her to know that magic wasn't a thing of only four people, but it did none the less. "You seem to have very, eh, fond memories of such a devoted, patient, kind and trustworthy person, right?"
"I'm a research assistant with a mutant think tank," Amanda explained with a slight twinkle in her eyes. "Plus I'm involved in a sort of occult network - world-wide magical research to keep an eye on things, mainly. So yeah, lots of travelling, but not so much with the dressing up in leather and giant robots." The finer details of the Trenchcoats would keep. "As for Strange - Doctor Stephen Strange, that is - he's a good sort. A bit of a stuffed shirt sometimes and not always comfortable with teenage girls with attitude, but he won't steer you wrong."
"The... this Brownstone thing right? It sounds fishy, but then again, there is a jet under the basketball court." The occult network magical thingy did rise a flag for Nico, but truly, she wouldn't understand a thing even if she asked, so it would be better to keep it for later. And then, the unexpected; Nico covered her mouth with both hands, laugh barely contained as she tried to relax herself. "Really now...", more laughter, "Strange? Dr.Stange, the wizard? This is just way too good to be truth." As long as the guy taught her something, it was all OK with her, even though she preferred Amanda already; it was odd, but she sensed they were similar in ways she still didn't know how to describe. More creepy stuff for sure. "I don't mind him being...uptight, but I fear I might laugh in his face when I meet him."
Amanda's grin turned wicked. "That's what I'm kind of counting on. A bit of humility's good for the soul, or so I'm told." She stretched her hands above her head, straightening out her back. "All right, I need to move around a bit. You up for a trip into Salem Center for a coffee or something? I can take us on my Broomstick."
"Should I laugh...or be all serious; a broomstick? Are we talking about the real thing? Bewitched-like? Besides that, I'm more than willing to get out of here for a while." Still, the image of Amanda, or rather, a mixed Samantha-Amanda (Samanda? Amantha?) flying in a broomstick was going to leave a mental scar, she just knew it.
The Brit tried to look mysterious, although it was hard with laughter bubbling up. "Patience, young apprentice. All will be revealed. Let us away to the house of vehicles!" She said it with a dramatic flourish that wouldn't have looked out of place on a stage.
