The Snowflake of Characters (A Character Development exercise)

"Come on," said Arthur encouragingly, and began to walk. He headed east and explained as he went. "I've more or less memorized the route our bus takes," he said, having spent more than enough time standing around wondering what to do with himself "and the one we want runs four blocks along this street before it turns. If we trace the route back, we're bound to see it if it does show up and we're bound to find it eventually if it doesn't. Of course..." Wind Wonder was still hovering circles around him, so Arthur picked it up to an easy jog. "If you knew the route, you could probably scout ahead and report back anything interesting. We would just need some way to communicate with each other..." Several ridiculous plans involving birds and tin cans sprang to mind.

"You got a cell phone?"

edited 2nd Dec '10 9:31:04 PM by DaeBrayk

"It doesn't work in England, should've gone with Vonage," Wind Wonder said sarcastically. He smirked and went back down to his normal level. He looked p to Arthur, thinking about how it wasn't the same unless it was Brad. Still, he could dazzle this guy with his techniques.

"Worry not, I can hear anything as long a I pay attention," Wind Wonder said simply. "I can also send any voice to you from anywhere," he said, glad to be a reservoir of information as usual. He took to bouncing around whilst hovering, barely containing his newfound curiosity.

"As a matter of fact, allow me to demonstrate," He said. He smirked smugly and he flew directly vertically, rotating while doing so, allowing the cold breeze to float with him. That was when he realized he forgotten it was colder the higher you got. He only reached 20 feet into the air and whispered into the air: "You can probably hear this" and he sent it into the wind sent the image directly to the ear of Arthur.

(too tired to think of anything plot-ish, 'night all)

(OOC - Geez, this is why being in different timezones is irritating. When I'm at my most productive, late afternoon to night-time, you're all asleep!)

Yomiko thought she heard someone whisper straight into her ear; "You can probably hear this." At that, she jumped.

"Hey, who said that?" she asked — to nobody in particular turning around. It seemed they were carrying on their business, no heed to to her.

It must be the wind..

The wind which came up all of a sudden, scuffling her hair, brushing snowflakes along her face. Yomiko had to hold her breath; her nose liked to sneeze then, easily tickled by the slightest touch. "Ac— ach.."

She looked up — the snow whirled around a brightly clad figure in the air. It seemed a very strange December night, for there was yet another mysterious figure in the blocks. Her mouth gaped open.

"Who.. who are you?" Yomiko spoke, after a while.

edited 3rd Dec '10 8:57:47 AM by QQQQQ

Wind Wonder realized his little goof, the wind is a temperamental thing to manipulate. He couldn't help but be a bother. While the question wasn't addressed to him, his ego owuld not allow for him to not introduce himself. He came to the conclusion that anyone would question his majestic presence. He couldn't stop smirking, this was show-off evening for her him. The only people that knew about him were in Las Vegas. His existence was overshadowed in London by Psy-kick. No longer.

He decided to make a show of it, mostly because he couldn't stand the snow building up on his face and lashes, and there was even a little buildup on his long and pointed nose. He concentrated and in an instant the snow was no longer falling upon him. He was in a column of wind, repelling the snow leaving him clear, albeit still chilly. Next he would communicate with the one who caught his message.

"I am the Wind Wonder. Did you catch my previous goof?" Ivan whispered into the air and sent it trailing along into Yomiko's ear.

"I am Wind Wonder, did you get my previous goof?"

Arthur squinted up at Wind Wonder, having been on the verge of leaving without him. "I...guess I didn't?" he said, beginning to doubt the kid's claims. He continued down the street with the assumption that Wind Wonder would follow him and a growing hope that he wouldn't.

In spite of his disdain for the weather, Arthur found himself once more enjoying the sights. Living in a world of beaches and sunshine made you kind of stop caring about either, and in an odd way, the dreary streets delighted him. They had a depth—a maturity to them, almost, that was lacking in the world he was accustomed to. In another way, he was fairly certain that this would be his last trip to the British Isles.

The wind, it whispered words! Or rather, the levitating man made the wind whisper them — Yomiko deduced. She had to wonder what Class of Power he bore; she had never seen abilities like these before in her field of operations.

More importantly, if he could float.. what did he need to ride the bus for? (Or was he another race entirely, like the Carlian Milo?)

Yomiko Readman held her caution. She stuck a hand, inconspicuously as to not arouse his attention, into one of her coat pockets filled full of paper cards. If he proved himself hostile. She hoped he wouldn't be. She just wanted to get over to the Midnight Jean Riel Festival.

Think— what should she say to him..

()

"Mr Windy!" the young woman shouted over the howling air. "I hope you won't mind my asking— would you kindly check over the area? See where the bus has gone at?"

(A strange question to ask, in retrospect, when she'd just barely gotten acquainted with him.)

edited 3rd Dec '10 2:03:31 PM by QQQQQ

Wind Wonder heard the message of Yomiko and was delighted that his maturity was being recognized. a 10 year old being called a "Mister". The boy giggled in boyish glee a he returned to ground level, the snow still avoiding his column of existence. He nodded at Yomiko and with a smug smirk he expanded his mind to the surrounding area, feeling wherever the air was and any disturbance was an obstacle that materialized as perfect picture in his mind.

Approximately a mile away, the bus was struggling through the snow and the driving carefully along the Ice. Before Wind Wonder could feel something else, trouble. A reckless driver, probably American, was disregarding the Ice and going at a dangerous pace. Judging by his calculations, the car would impact the Bus in about 45 seconds. He broke form his trance in a wide-eyed panic.

"Ma'am, the Bus is about to crash!" He said hurriedly and without hesitation he flew in the direction of the low approaching bus and carried up Arther in a powerful slipstream with him.

"No time to explain, Car and Bus collision, time to put your talents to use!" Wind Wonder said without hesitation.

Milo stared at the lady with the red scarf. He was beginning to think that she was more than a little crazy.

Had she just... asked the wind to look for the bus? He craned his head around to see if maybe there had been something up there... but he couldn't see anything.

And she'd just pulled his ears, and then given him a... he looked down at the objects she'd pressed into his hands. A hat and scarf made of paper? That she'd... made? In a few seconds? Out of the sheaf of papers she'd been clutching?

"Um, thanks," he said, stepping backwards a little. "I might just..." She was still staring into the sky, and didn't answer him. He put the hat and scarf on, wedging the hat between his ears. He felt ridiculous. They wore paper hats here?

Just then, with a swirl of wind and snow, a figure dropped out of the sky to land in front of the woman! Milo instinctively reached for his crystal, hanging on the chain around his neck, thinking it was an attack. He threw a hand out to cast a shield to protect the woman - but then realised it was a human child.

The child smiled - and then his expression changed suddenly.

"Ma'am, the bus is about to crash!" he cried. And then, as quickly as he had appeared, he left in a swirl of snow and a wind that tugged at Milo's new scarf.

“Miss, what... what’s going on?” he asked. “What’s a bus?” Clearly it crashing was an emergency... Presumably there were people inside it? Or about to be crashed into?

edited 3rd Dec '10 4:37:40 PM by LoniJay

"Son of a—" said Arthur, and the wind cut him off mid-sentence. "I should warn you!" he shouted, "I'm not actually very good!"

It was true, but it was too late. The wind hurled him onto a particularily nasty patch of road ice where he skidded to a cold and uneasy stop. From one direction came the missing bus, from the other an erratic SUV. The ice was thick and packed solid—to try to melt it now would only make it slicker. Arthur scrambled off the ice patch in the direction of the bus. "Stop!" he shouted, waving his arms over his head. "Stop, please, unsafe road conditions!"

The driver was already slowed to account for the weather, but he couldn't very well run Arthur over. He had just opened the door to demand an explaination when the SUV skidded through a stop sign and across the piece of road the bus had been seconds from occupying. Arthur sighed, held out his fare for the dumbfounded busdriver, and watched the bus doors close in his face. It took the driver a second to get the bus started again. Arthur tapped gently on the glass. The driver pretended not to notice.

The bus pulled away and arrived at the bus stop a few minutes later. A few minutes previously, Arthur began to run.

edited 3rd Dec '10 4:45:12 PM by DaeBrayk

Wind Wonder swerved around the bus just as it stopped and he went right for the out of control SUV. It no longer had traction and there were still other cars in the road. Using wind resistance to slow it down wouldn't work. He would have to go the twister route. He threw a current under the swerving car and forced it upwards and maintained a tornado beneath it as it hung 20 feet into the air.

He paused hovering over the street below and he had his hands upwards, focusing the tornado. When he heard the car's engine stop he placed it safely down in a parking space and he hovered towards the car, irritable. He saw the driver open the door and he rose himself to his eye level and stuck his face into his.

"Drive safely, worm," Wind Wonder said pompously, and then left the man wondering what just happened,heading back towards the bus, wondering where Arthur disappeared to.

(OOC:Just to be clear— the bus has arrived.)

(OOC: Bump? =(

This post was thumped by the Eldritch Flyswatter of Horror

(what the hell just happened? Q, the four posts prior to yours (two of which are content, one of which is clarification because last time the bus arrived noone noticed and one of which is bump) have more or less what you just...said? aAahhh I'm so confused =(.

Ok, the crash was averted. we already had that down. and then you re-averted it, having...well, having arthur act severely out of character in the process, tbh, but mostly I'm wondering why you said it again at all?

And to everyone else...we've been waiting for this bus to arrive for four pages. It's been arrived for a while now. maybe...get on it? =P)

edited 5th Dec '10 6:51:20 PM by DaeBrayk

(Uh, Q, you messed up what Arthur and Windy did. Arthur stopped the bus and Wind Wonder stopped the SUV. Same methods, different targets.)

(OOC: ..oops. I thought the two posts above conflicted with each other (some weird, mind screwy mis-reading of mine), and I thought they needed some 'creative' fixing My bad. Forgive me?)

The red Routemaster, two-storeys high, lugged to a stop in front of the waiting popsicles. Lit from within by fluorescent lighting, the bus was naturally the warmest place one could be after so long a delay. As its wheels hissed, letting out air, the entrance doors slid open.

And what was air-conditioned warm came out brushing Yomiko's frosted cheeks — an ordinary sandwich to a starving tongue. She could savour the rest of the warm flowing through her body..

She took a step inside; the bus driver greeted her a Merry Christmas, his voice rattling as he apologised for the traffic delays. (Well, what could anyone say after their bus had been whisked away by freak winds?)

Yomiko pulled out her wallet, and flopped it to where it shows her government-issued SIS pass — a "Do-whatever-I-want-and-get-away-with-it" all access backstage pass. The privilege would make anyone blush, but the novelty had already gone away by Yomiko's second year serving. A necessary privilege in her line of work.

She could hear the bus' fans whirring full throttle — melted snow slush slicked the floor, amongst tossed away scraps of newspaper, coffee cups and other tidbits. Half the velvet seats were filled; mostly people either burying their noses between pages 1 and 2 of the The Times, or listlessly staring out the window. Behind the stairs, there were these two punkish-looking guys lounging at the back, their chat so obnoxious, so blithe, but having this tough air on them which would make a mild-mannered fellow hesitate asking them for a moment's decency.

Yomiko flinched a bit when her eyes met with theirs. Not wanting any trouble, she chose to sit by the right-hand, second-row near the entrance. There was apprehension in her breath, in her tapping foot, in the core of her being, as her fingers fumbled the music box in her pocket.

edited 5th Dec '10 7:53:13 PM by QQQQQ

Wind Wonder decided to let the guy go, he probably had his own life to live. He slipped into a convenience store bathroom and switched back into his green and purple scarf, hat, three layers combo as well as his big round thick glasses. It fooled the Americans, and it fooled the people of Metropolis in Superman stories, it should be good enough for the English.

Now a Ivan, the young boy congratulated himself on a job well done. He saved people and didn't even need to call another member of the league. Oh, right, speaking of the league, he still needed to buy his toys and then try to find some sort of present for his very very English adult friend, Teletrent. He hated the guy man but he had to do something, everyone was getting presents for each other at the league.

Ivan rolled his eyes and in a slightly irritable mood, the preteen genius took a walk so he could buy his English exclusive lego sets and continue his blistering cold search for a good gift. He took to the streets and his wide eyes looked too the sky, watching the snow falling all around him. He made the snow avoid his eyes with his control of the wind and continued to walk the lonely streets, missing Bradley surprisingly a lot.

(OOC: This post takes place before the bus arrives — sorry about the timing.)

A teenage boy was walking alongside the road, looking down at a set of tracks seemingly left by a group of people heading the opposite direction. He stopped walking; there was no point in going further. The trail did not continue or even fade out: it disappeared abruptly, as though the people who had left it had appeared out of nowhere. He studied the dividing line for a moment before exhaling sharply in an exasperated tone and turning around.

I can't decide whether this makes my situation better or worse.

The teenagers huddled in the bus shelter were variously watching the Japanese woman, the boy with the cat ears, the hovering boy warning about the bus crash, and other assorted components of their surroundings. If someone had been tracking their lines of sight, they would have noticed two things. First, that no two of them were ever looking at the same thing. Second, making the first more obvious: that every few seconds, one of them would turn his or her eyes on something another was looking at, just as the other looked away from it.

Why do I feel like I should recognize her? Hair, glasses, clothes, even the paper-folding — they all seem like they should be bringing up something, but I'm drawing a total blank. Is this the memory thing again? She didn't seem to recognize me. Maybe I know her as Nicolas? Her English is fluent enough that she probably wasn't raised in Japan, but maybe I should use Yoko just to be safe.

One of the teens in the group — an East Asian girl with long hair — seemed to come to a decision, and turned to face the woman as the boy in the paper hat asked, "What's a bus?"

"Is it always like this here?" she asked quietly, in an almost-perfect Midwestern American accent.

Arthur nearly kept pace with the bus as he ran after it, darting in and out of civilian and automotive traffic and stumbling to a halt at the busstop several minutes later, fare still in hand. He was no faster and no stronger than any other man of his age and activity level, but his skill with public transportation could practically be considered a superpower in and of itself. He paid worldessly, panting for breath, and began to peel back the layers of his winiter clothing in the sweltering bus. His sister, who had recieved a surprise invitation to some kind of festival, was meeting him at the last stop on the line, so, coat and scarf and hoodie in his arms, U of H scuba club tee-shirt sticking to his skin, he headed into the back of the bus which, he realized only after he sat down, was already occupied by the woman from the bus stop whose name he had either forgotten or never been told.

"H—..."

He said, in an out-of-breath attempt at a greeting, and sort of waved at her, but he wasn't sure she saw. His face, if possible, turned an even brighter crimson as he pressed his forhead into the frosted glass.

edited 5th Dec '10 8:49:07 PM by DaeBrayk

flashback

Someone had tapped Yomiko on the shoulder as the bus was coming. She had turned around, saw a woman, her face bewildered. "Is it always like this here?"

Yomiko had thought she noticed the brown eyes finding a recognition — on her? on another fellow? But that was just a thought, maybe, and she had dismissed it from mind. Her mouth had paused for words, as she glanced towards the other waiting patrons, considering the abnormal number of powered beings here, especially the cat-like Milo who seemed like he was from another world entirely.

The thought had raised hairs on her neck. It felt like something bigger was going on, on a grander scale. But what though, exactly, Yomiko could not put it to words.

"My dear—" Her Edinburgh accent had shone though her words as she spoke. "Hundreds of what people would call miraculous events happen every day, around the world. And such is what you have seen here in London. Yes, I do suppose magical happenings happen all the time, if you were to poke your nose around the right corner."

A pause.

"But magic and miracles do not always herald good things.." Yomiko had added. "Sadly." (The basis for her occupation's existence in the SIS.)

The bus had pulled over to the stop..

(OOC: @Dae Brayk — would you kindly clarify your post's writing? I'm sort of lost as to where you're at on the bus, or what your character's doing exactly.)

edited 5th Dec '10 9:34:52 PM by QQQQQ

(OOC: sure thing, (and of course I forgive your bizzare misreading =D). After Arthur and Wind stopped the bus from getting hit by the SUV, the bus-driver wouldn't let Arthur get on (it's probably against regulations to take on passengers anywhere other than the designated stops), so he chased after it until he got to the bus stop and got on there. At this time he went to the back of the bus, sat probably in the same row as your character but across the aisle, and utterly failed to say hello to her because he just ran a mile to catch the bus.)

(though, I'm looking back and it keeps making sense to me...do you think you could try to figure out exactly what doesn't make sense to you, so I can avoid it in the future or fix it or something?)

edited 5th Dec '10 9:37:05 PM by DaeBrayk

(OOC: Oh, now it makes sense to me now that you've said what happened. But with your lack of place description there — it seems vague where your character's at. And speaking of which, I like to say that you too, as well as other tropers, can have a grip on establishing the surrounding atmosphere also.)

As Yomiko looked out the bus' window at the passing street, the black musical box felt heavier and heavier in her pocket. Every toss of the box added questions upon questions to ponder. Who was Jean Riel? How did this box find itself amongst the pile of junk mail? Who sent her this box? And why, oh why, did the silver fleur-de-lis on its top strike out at some deep memory in her? Why was it so significant for her?

Yomiko pulled the box out, and looked at the symbol on its top once more in the sharp light. Felt her fingers along the emboss outlines, as if that action could help piece together some answers. She considered opening the box to hear its message again, and its waltzing tune, but she didn't like to draw attention to herself, not in a place like this.

Then, at the corner of her eye, she recognized one of the people she stood with at the bus stop; sitting right across from her. If standing with him could be called getting acquainted enough, then, eh, why not ask him if he knows anything of the box?

Yomiko shuffled her derrière to the aisle. With the box at hand, she said, almost as a whisper, "Hello. If I've dis— if I've bothered you, I'm sorry. But, I wonder, would you be so kind to have a look at this box for me? Tell me if you know anything about it?"

She hesitated for a moment, then added, as a pretext, "I found this lying on my doorstep this morning.. all by itself. Didn't have a name or sender's address.. and yes, I must apologise if this is coming out of a complete stranger, but I had trouble making heads or tails about it all day long, and I was figuring if another pair of eyes could solve this mystery for me.."

edited 5th Dec '10 10:13:45 PM by QQQQQ

Arthur felt a knot in his stomach loosen as the woman from the bus stop joined him (he hadn't completley offended her after all), and took the box she offered. It was very small and very delicate, the sort of thing people didn't often entrust to his disproportionately large and clumsy-looking hands. "Like a big old yellow lab puppy" was the comparison it seemed every woman in Arthur's life had made or would eventually make. He sighed quietly and ran a finger over the edges of the box, across the fleur-de-lis (which he couldn't possibly say out loud because he would certainly mispronounce it) and under the edge of the expertly-crafted lid.

(ooc: can I make up what's inside, [is it the invitation to that party thing?] or do you already have something planned?)

edited 5th Dec '10 10:49:34 PM by DaeBrayk