Let's chase away these indecisively cloudy days

Emy · Jun 15, 2014

Pham Thi Anh Sang

Anh Sang really disliked cloudy days. They were, in her mind, those days when the sky couldn't decide whether it wanted to be happy or whether it wanted to cry. Lame, lame, laaaame! It was just plain depressing. If it was sunny, then she could play with the light and it would be nice and warm out. If it was rainy, then she could play with the puddles and wait for the rainbows afterwards. At least since it was summer, it was still pretty warm and not too icky out.

It wasn't usual that Anh Sang came to the sports field for any particular purpose besides make pretty things and rainbows that sometimes blow up so oops. But ever since meeting that nice blonde lady and her sister, the Vietnamese girl was really excited about making things with her powers. Well, to be fair, she was always excited about that but now she was super excited. Since one of the things she was supposed to be making was a sword, she figured that she should just go and find Mister Cunningham and watch him do things. For ideas and all. She saw him pretty often at the fields anyways so she was sure that she'd find him there that day.

She didn't see him immediately, at first, though. Huh, maybe he's off doing teacher things or something. She walked around the field a little in boredom, amusing herself by using her butterflies to build short staircases of light under her feet. The light she used for it was the soft white kind so she sank through it a little if she didn't walk fast enough. But after a while, Anh Sang got a little bored of that, too, and started to make the steps of harder material that wouldn't give away.

Wow, he's really not here right now! Anh Sang pouted as she surveyed the sports field at the top of a ten foot tall staircase of light. "Ahhhhh! So bored... What do I do now?"

All she could really do was wait around until he showed up. But sitting down was really boring, too, and it might just put her to sleep. Groaning in annoyance, Anh Sang looked around some more, wondering what she was supposed to do. It was kind of a windy day, so her hair was getting blown all over the place, which Anh Sang found pretty annoying. Up at the top of her stairs, it was particularly obvious.

But it did make for some good ideas. Huh... She dissolved all of the steps behind her for a moment, using the light to create a single really big butterfly. It was already holding up by itself but Anh Sang wanted to see if it could support weight. Experimentally, she stuck her hands into the light and just... held something, and jumped straight up.

She forgot about the wind, though, so she landed at the edge of her step, wobbling. Okay, maybe that doesn't work, the girl thought with a frown at her creation. Hard light just sank too quickly. What if I use soft light for it? But she still had to hold onto something.

Huh... There's got to be a way...

Critical · Jun 16, 2014

The novelty of seeing Jacob practice his swordsmanship had mostly worn off among the student body. Like a lot of the strange and often wondrous things that could occur in the Academy, even Jacob's fantastic display of sword-based artistry became something of a routine, normal, and just another thing that someone did. There were still times when he would get blushing glances from his students, but that was more a product of him doing his practices in flattering exercise wear. But regardless of who was or was not watching him, Jacob still liked to get out and hone his skills.

His training had changed somewhat though. As he grew more accustomed to his skills and his abilities with the katana, Jacob pushed himself to do more and more with it, warranting a more warrior-esque look to him than when he started. What had began as just a tight tank top and exercise pants evolved to include martial arts wraps on his hands and he even invested in those shoes ninjas wore (Which he later learned were called "Jika-tabi"). And the moves he practices were... They were as careful and cautious as ever, but he was putting more focused power into them and he was not holding back wherever he could.

The winds Anh Sang was experiencing were actually the result of Jacob's practice. She had not spotted him earlier because he was in full-tilt speed mode. He was a blur across the Fields as he moved and attacked, causing the wind to kick up all around him. Some of the students began to recognize sudden wind patterns as the result of Mr. Cunningham practicing.

As fate would have it, his latest move brought him close to Anh Sang. A sudden burst of air signaled his presence as he came within a few yards of her, sword out in his right as he finished a slash and his sheathe in his left hand. The way he moved was akin sliding. As he slowed to a stop not far from her, his legs did not even seem to be moving, as if he had been hovering on his feet rather than running.

As he caught his breath, his eyes scanned around him and found the young girl with the butterflies. His serious and focused look immediately changed to the more friendly and warm look he gave his students.

"Why Hello there, Ahn Sang. Practicing your moves too?"

Emy · Jun 16, 2014

Pham Thi Anh Sang

Okay, so she couldn't use only hard light, because then the butterfly would sink too fast. And she couldn't use only soft light, because then she wouldn't be able to hold onto the butterfly. Anh Sang stared at the sky, open mouthed and glassy eyed as she thought. A lot of people might have worried about that expression but this was actually a good thing. This was Anh Sang's working face, for things that were slightly less important than the most important things. Whatever that meant!

I have an idea! She should make the frame of the butterfly in hard light and then the rest of it in soft. Then she could still have something to hold onto while keeping most of the thing weightless. But maybe it'll still be too heavy? Well maybe not if she made the frame thin enough. She pondered it for a little longer before smacking herself in the forehead.

"Wait, this is silly! I have magic!" Seeing as the Academy was largely magical and people still needed to work things out by some kind of method, this justification really shouldn't have flown. But for some reason, it worked really well for Anh Sang. The less she knew, the more things it appeared she could do. Achievements in ignorance, basically, and luckily for her, Anh Sang's very personality had it in that she wasn't particularly worried about things like logic. All that she needed to know was if things worked. The why, not so much.

The girl looked up at the butterfly for a moment more before shrugging. Okay, hard light, soft light, whatever! Just work! And then she grabbed onto the butterfly again and jumped off of her step. The place where she had been standing instantly turned back into normal sized butterflies.

With the much larger butterfly, Anh Sang actually managed to glide through the air for a little while before her feet hit the ground. It probably would have worked better from a much higher drop but she hadn't really been thinking that far ahead at the time. For the moment, she was just happy that she had managed to do something.

Just as she was getting ready to go and do it again, however, she was surprised to hear Mister Cunningham call out to her. "Hey!" Anh Sang spun around to him immediately. Since Mommy said it was rude to point at people, she just threw both of her arms up and pointed at the sky instead. "I was looking for you! When did you get here?" The words were probably a little rude but she said them very cheerily, if not just a bit accented.

Critical · Jun 16, 2014

Jacob let out an impressed whistle as he watch Anh Sang glide down from her floating magic perch. At that point in his career at the Academy, Jacob was more or less familiar with all the strange sights around campus. Seeing a little girl conjure magical constructs and butterflies seemed fairly standard, if very whimsical as well.

Knowing his etiquette with a blade, Jacob quickly re-sheathed his sword.

"I've been here for awhile. If you mean the practice field. Heh. Though I was flying around a lot, so maybe you just missed me."

He imitated her little sky point as he approached.

"So what did you need me for, miss? I'm totally available at the moment."

He quietly wondered what Ang Sang wanted him for exactly. Normally students who wanted help in the classroom sought him out in the classroom as that was where any catch-up lessons could be held. If that logic held true to other locations, then that meant... She was looking for help with her powers! That was his first, excited thought at least. It would certainly be a first for him. He himself had only learned and begun practicing his own abilities relatively recently, so it was not like he was a total expert in the field.

Emy · Jun 16, 2014

Pham Thi Anh Sang

Anh Sang perked up a little at the mention of flying, feeling a little bit jealous herself since Mister Cunningham was clearly awesome and her butterfly glider was only just kind of neat. Well, that's okay! she thought to herself firmly, puffing her cheeks. Someday really, really soon, it'll be awesome, too! She was sure of it!

"Sooo, I need to do really awesome things with magic," Anh Sang told the teacher, nodding in childish seriousness. "It's really important! We're doing this thing with some queen and princess. I joined the queen and not the princess, because some people asked me to. But one of them was looking for, uh, weapons -not real ones, though! Fake ones!" the girl elaborated quickly, even though she was already speaking quite rapidly. She wasn't quite pronouncing everything correctly and words were slurring into each other but if anybody listened carefully enough, they would be able to still make out what she was saying.

"Anyways, they asked me to make some things because they saw me making this staff -a really awesome staff," she said with pride. "It's all shiny and pretty and aaahhh! It's really nice and now I can call it back whenever I want!" All she needed to do was go and send a butterfly back to her room for it. Technically, she could always just dismantle the staff and put it back together but then she might make a mistake while putting it back together and that would be super annoying.

"And then, because of that, they asked me to make some pretty things for them. But it's not like lots of people carry real things around, so that's why I was looking for you," Anh Sang finished before taking a deep breath. Looking up at Mister Cunningham, she added earnestly, "And you're really cool, too, and I knew you'd be here, soo...." She bounced slightly on the balls of her feet in impatience. "Yep, that's why!"

Critical · Jun 16, 2014

Jacob found himself having to transition into Dad Mode into order to fully comprehend a lot of what Anh Sang was saying, or trying to say. The young girl certainly had plenty to say, and enough lung capacity to say it all seemingly without pauses or punctuation. However, like some children around her age, she had trouble properly articulating everything. Her words became mashed together at points and she had yet to learn that the people listening to her needed a momentary pause for processing. She would learn in time, obviously, but for now Jacob needed to turn on the parts of his brain he used to decipher the words his own daughter spoke when she was in the same situation at the same age.

So he took it all in, standing tall over the young girl and nodding as his head gradually processed everything she said. Some kind of fairy tale-like conflict. Possibly imaginary between her and some friends. She needed to gather weapons for the it too? That seemed strangely regimental and organized for what sounded like a bunch kids playing pretend. He was half expecting her to say that someone was out selling bonds to aid the war effort.

"Soooo.... You need me to help you find--No--make these fake weapons. And they ARE fake, right?"

There was a bit of concern on his face as he adjusted his sword and sheathe in his hand.

"I-I suppose I can help. I mean, I don't make these things but I think I have a good enough handle on what you need. And that is.... What? You want to see my sword or something?"

Emy · Jun 17, 2014

Pham Thi Anh Sang

Anh Sang bobbed her head, completely missing all of Mister Cunningham's worry. "Oh yep, they're all fake!" she said blithely. "I don't think I can make real ones anyways because that would take lots of hard light and I only have so much of that because it's a pain to make." It really was! She knew, just knew, that there was an easier way to make it -because of some of her other, failed experiments would spit it out as an end product- but until she could figure out exactly how, she was just stuck with sticking about a thousand layers of soft light on top of each other and squishing them together.

"Um, yes? Sooooo, can I?" the girl said in response to the teacher's second question. "I wouldn't copy it exactly, though. That's just really lazy! And then I'd have to make other things, too, so it's no good to just copy things anyways." Tilting her head to the side, she frowned to herself suddenly. "Oh, but I guess I couldn't do it very well even if I wanted to. Soft light is kind of weird like that. Hard to do details right but everything gets really shiny and blurry and I guess that's pretty? Huh..." The next moment, Anh Sang went right back to her working face, complete with blank stare in a vague, upward direction.

Critical · Jun 17, 2014

"I suppose you can see it. But! Promise that you'll be careful and follow my instructions if I give any, okay?"

Even if he was just displaying his sword to her, Jacob was not about to be any less cautious and safe with it. As he had become more familiar with his abilities and his capability to cause destruction (He was reminded of it every time he looked at the one tree on campus he had cut cleanly in half from his razor wind alone), Jacob began developing a real sense of the power he was wielding. For all intent and purposes, he was going to treat his sword in a similar manner as he might treat a gun.

Very slowly, he pulled his blade from the sheathe and, very carefully, held it low for Anh Sang to see. He held a firm hand on the grip and kept the blade parallel to the ground, curved edge outward. His other hand gingerly held the blade near the tip.

"Be very careful now.

If you're trying to make your weapons like the blacksmith made this sword, then you might try the same techniques(?). The blade is actually one piece of metal, folded over and over onto itself. Could you replicate that with your light?"

Emy · Jun 18, 2014

Pham Thi Anh Sang

She snapped back to reality at Mister Cunningham's words, bobbing her head. "Uh huh, okay," the girl said, still a little dazed. It might have only been a little bit of time that had passed, but she had gotten so many awesome ideas! Still, she would probably listen to what the teacher told her. Maybe. Yes. Okay. Sometimes things just had a habit of getting by her when she wasn't paying total attention. Kids were just kind of like that.

When the man unsheathed his sword again, Anh Sang leaned forward to look at the curved blade. To her disappointment, it wasn't exceptionally shiny, nor did it seem to be particularly sharp. That last part seemed especially weird to the girl since it, well. It was a sword, duh! They were kind of supposed to be sharp, but maybe this was one of those instances where things were a whole lot sharper than they seemed? That's what Mommy and Daddy were always telling her about needles and they were right!

"Um, yeah. I do that all the time, yep!" she answered him, thinking about how she sometimes made dresses and capes out of light. If she thought about it a little more, it sounded like an awfully familiar process.

"Ehhhh, I think that's kind of how I make hard light," Anh Sang said, frowning childishly in thought. "It's kind of stupidly long to make, though! But I guess I'm not really going for that anyways. I just need something kind of gooey and that'll be fine."

Critical · Jun 19, 2014

"Oh. Right. You're trying to make something non-lethal."

That one important little detail had farted out of Jacob's mind the moment he had grabbed his sword, and he quietly rolled his eyes at himself. Anh Sang even had a second valid reason for why that would not have been an optimal route to take in the manufacture of her play weapons: The process just took too long. So far, Jacob was stymied by a ten year old. Not the first time that had happened, mind. The only way adults ever won against young kids was just to pull the Adult Card and force the issue, rather then let a child's logic play its intricate mind games.

Carefully, he bobbed the sword in his hands, feeling its weight and trying to discern another suggestion. He thought back to when it was made, and how it was made. The folding of the metal was just a step in the process. There had to be another part that could be replicated and be useful.

"Hm.... Oh! Okay. How about this:

You make the grip, or the part you hold, out of the hard light. But leave the inner portion hollow. Then fill that inner part with not-hard light and stretch into a 'blade' of sorts.

It's like how my sword is made. The blade doesn't just stop at the hilt. A part of it is embedded in the grip, for stability. There's a name for it, but I forget it."

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Let's chase away these indecisively cloudy days

Emy

Well-Known Member

Critical

Well-Known Member

Emy

Well-Known Member

Critical

Well-Known Member

Emy

Well-Known Member

Critical

Well-Known Member

Emy

Well-Known Member

Critical

Well-Known Member

Emy

Well-Known Member

Critical

Well-Known Member