ʀɪᴄʜɪᴇ (beepbeep) wrote in evaluation, @ 2020-01-10 08:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | !rooms: 4: day 4, it: chapter two: richie tozier, the raven cycle: blue sargent |
Who: Blue & Richie
What: SUPER-CHARGED SCRYING
When: Day 4, evening
Where: Hotel lobby
Warnings: Rocks fall, everyone dies
Status: Complete
It was a pleasant black, starry night to be squirreled away inside a resort - or, well, Richie wasn’t entirely sure what time it was but after spending part of the day attempting to figure out what people were doing to get organized about any incoming storm (not much, unsurprisingly), he thought he should give something else a shot. Like, scrying - since he’d gone through the trouble of learning a little, and Adam had gone through the trouble of teaching him. This was the type of shit he pictured happening in a place that was earthy, like being wrapped in the cloak and comfort of a musty library, space aglow and lit by soft candlelight and flickering torches - reminiscent of the olden days, so quaint. But no. He was at a table in the resort lobby that smelled like jerk chicken and suntan lotion, by those large and potentially dangerous windows - if they blew out into a million pieces during a hurricane, no one better be in the vicinity. They still didn’t exactly have direction though; maybe he could help with that. “Alright, so - “ He had a black ceramic bowl filled with water, and if that didn’t work then he’d make cups of tea for them; if nothing else, it was possible the squiggles and shapes left behind from the tea leaves would trigger something. Mostly Richie was hoping water scrying would do the job, however. It was what he was most familiar with thus far. “How does your...thingee work?” he asked Blue. “Do you need to do anything special?” She was the prime Starbucks table, the one everyone wanted to sit at. So this would be interesting, if nothing else. "All I have to do is sit here and watch. It's working right now," Blue said, flourishing her fingers in a sarcastic version of 'jazz hands'. She leaned over his scrying bowl, assessing. Everything looked right, which meant he already knew how to do this or someone taught him. Most people she met made grand sweeping assumptions on how to link up to the spiritual world to get answers. Most people also didn't know the dangers involved, and Blue wasn't about to watch any amateurs die in real time when their soul didn't come back while trying to predict the future. Even her own house, full of knowledgeable psychics, wasn't immune to death. But she was getting desperate. Storm clouds, ominous clues that pointed to getting pillaged by pirates, this Russian roulette of room jumping—all of it just meant she was willing to take the risk to avoid another Krampus situation. Blue hoped she wasn't making a mistake. "It will be stronger when you start scrying. You should notice right away. Things should be clearer for whatever your thing does." She paused, then tucked her hands against her chest; a safety measure. "Contact makes it—" Blue wrestled with the right word, before settling on: "A lot. We probably shouldn't start with that, unless you like sticking your mouth in electrical sockets." “I’ve stuck my mouth on some questionable places, but never an electrical socket,” Richie quipped. “Okay, I’ll just - see.” Yeah, he’d see. That was always the fun, awkward part, right? Usually visions came to him when he was asleep - kind of a prophetic dream, or at least, that’s how he’d seen Santa’s hellshop in fakeout USSR. When Adam gave him scrying tips, it was when neither of them had any abilities to peer into the future anyway. So. He’d just hold onto his ass, then. Figuratively. Mentally, he went over the checklist - there weren’t any bright lights in the room, he was relaxed, gazing deep into the bowl (though apparently you could look at the surface of the water as well). The tools didn’t really matter - tarot, crystal ball, mirrors, whatever, he’d been assured of that too; what mattered was the practice. And he needed to practice. So he let his vision go a little out of focus, glasses sliding down his nose a bit as he looked into the water - and he didn’t know if it was because he was really trying, or it was Blue’s presence, but some switch flipped. His eyes went foggy, clouded over in white as he was pulled into a disaster zone - literally, disaster. Twisted metal, collapsed roof of the resort, walls missing, trees lying on their sides with their roots in the air; the oncoming storm was sheets of rain and darkness, a behemoth spinning over the sea, and he could hear the screaming of the wind, decibels above howling and - “Jesus,” he snapped out of it, gripping the edge of the table. “That storm - “ His ears were still ringing, he just needed a second. All Blue had time to do was give Richie a look that said ew, I don't want to know before he went under. The one bad thing about being a generator—a mirror, Blue was a mirror—was that there wasn't much she was able to do when other psychics did their "psychicking". It seemed absurd that her mother was a psychic, and her cousins' were psychic, and her mother's friends were psychic, but Blue had whatever this was. A sidekick to the real clairvoyants? She could watch for outward signs of distress; she could count down minutes to try and pull them back; she could be wholly uncomfortable watching their eyes go strange, unfocused, and otherworldly. She once stabbed Adam in his hand when he scried too far, so she was also good for violence, should Richie need it. Until then, Blue waited for her cue and she could be annoyingly impatient when her nerves got the best of her. Blue had been leaning in, slowly, the longer Richie was scrying—which was both not long at all and forever in Blue's mind—but when he blurted out Jesus!, Blue startled back with her own yelp. That storm. That was enough for Blue to let lose her stream of questions, giving Richie zero seconds to recover. "When? How long? How bad?" Blue asked in one rushed breath. She reached across to be comforting, but paused just before making contact. Not yet, not yet, don't overload him yet. "What else did you see?" “Not sure when, a few days at best. We’re usually in a room for a week, right? So the seventh day, probably, but - it’s definitely bad. It’s going to destroy the hotel if we don’t stop it somehow, or like...really fortify things,” Richie replied, though he wasn’t sure if they could all manage to work together to do it. This wasn’t some little pissant thundercloud, it was like a massive typhoon. Could they prevent the storm, was that an option? Have the magic people do a raindance, staving off a fucking hurricane? Batten down the hatches, sure, but how? Maybe some of the others had ideas. Perhaps. He rolled his shoulders, flexing his fingers - and then reached for Blue’s hand, not touching yet, but it was like he could feel the static electricity. “Let me try again. I’ll see what else I can get.” Blue's gaze unintentionally drifted toward the giant windows they were currently sitting in front of. Richie was right; it was already the fourth day, if things were going to stay somewhat predictable, they had less than three days to get their shit together. Food wasn't going to matter if they were all dead. She snapped her attention back to Richie, making a big dramatic show of shaking her head side to side to rid herself of residual anxiousness. Blue was no good if she was wound tight. Maybe she should have done some breathing exercises or yoga. Too late now. "If it gets to be too much, I can, uh, unplug you," was the only warning Blue gave before she closed the distance between their hands and held tight. Unplug him? Shit, that sounded ominous. “That doesn’t mean kill me, right? Just checking.” But, well, whatever - he was going to do this so hashtag yolo, and all that shit. He took Blue’s hands in his giant ones - though her grip was pretty strong, bless. Richie relaxed, he focused, he watched the gentle ripple of the water until he felt like he was a part of it - kind of in this moment of zen, until his physical eyes, those baby blues, took a backseat to the other kind of sight. The white fog covered his irises, his pupils - he felt wrenched into it, no doubt due to the electrical current surging between him and the Starbucks socket. Colors were bright and vivid; he saw a volcano, lying there against the skyline like some kind of bomb. Everything was calm but then all of a sudden, ka-boom. There was no rain, but rocks - the sky filled with a choking, smoky powder billowing up and up in black plumes and the air turned heated fast. Red lava flowed in thick rivers, scorching a path as it went - He was in that one longer because he was trying to identify where the fuck it even was but he couldn’t - the volcano erupted and that was all, but it just kept going and going and where the fuck was he? Blue might want to unplug him now, because he’d fry his brain trying to figure it out. Damnit. Holding on to Richie felt stronger, the connection always did this way. But she also felt colder too, the psychic-amplifying current in her was tethered to her in ways she hadn't explored, only that it did something. Not helpful. She watched Richie's eyes go wild and eldritch, that unnatural way when scrying took over the body. This time she was ready, afraid that pushing Richie to scry quickly, one right after the other, could have adverse effects. Maybe he wasn't all the way back in his body yet. Maybe he was pushing himself back out too soon. Blue lost count of how long he was looking into that dark bowl of water, and so in a panic, she let go of his hands. Her own went to her temples holding her head, concentrating—cut it off, stop, stop, stop. In one swift action, all the charge of her power in the immediately area just vanished. Like being unplugged. Gansey told her that to cut off her ability like that was impressive. She had been warmed by the compliment, but never felt worthy of the praise. It had been a self-preservation reaction—let the psychics or ghosts drain her or risk the blow back. She may have felt daredevilish attempting to get answers on this island, but she liked being alive. She liked Richie being alive too. She looked up, hoping of all hopes that worked. "Richie?" It was like falling - his perception of time was distorted, he was reaching for clues about that volcano until everything became a swirling blur and then bam. He hit the cement hard - or came back to reality, back to the present. “Whoa,” he shook his head, the fog fading from his eyes. “Yeah, hey - I’m still here.” He was fine - a little brain melty, but fine. “There was this volcano, it erupted. But I’ve never seen it before. I was trying to figure out where exactly it was.” At least they got something - he’d continued to feel a bit guilty after seeing the workshop in Santa’s nightmare and not being able to efficiently warn anyone because the vision had only been a snippet. One piece of the puzzle, and it didn’t explain why they’d all be at the factory and that they’d be starving for the duration too. A completely hurricane-flattened hotel (the one they were staying at, coincidentally) was pretty clear though. “I probably shouldn’t go again,” he admitted, taking off his glasses for a second and pressing his fingertips into his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose to attempt to stave off the residual headache. “We have a storm to prepare for anyway, yeah?” "Great, a volcano," Blue said with all the disdain she could muster, which was a lot in her tiny little body—hyper-compressed disdain. "As if the storm wasn't bad enough." She shivered then, tired and wired. There was so much to do suddenly, and all Blue wanted to do was face-plant onto the table. "No, I don't think you should go again either," she said, before adding, "You probably shouldn't have gone the second time. Your whole spiritual self is probably out of whack. I should have warned you better." Then again, Blue could never experience her abilities on herself. She couldn't amplify an amplifier; it just didn't work that way. But looking exhausted and thoroughly whipped from scrying seemed like a usual side effect, she could have warned him about that. She tried to look supportive, but her whole face was scrunched up as if she ate something sour. How did she tell a psychic way to go! when they just saw the end of the world coming? "You did a good job, though?" Bad compliment, try again. "Not a lot of people can handle doing that. And now we have the option to prepare, when we haven't before, so that's all you." Blue made another weird face, even she didn't like the awkward praise. "Is any of this working or should I just go and start readying for this century's Pompeii-slash-extinction event?" Pompeii-slash-extinction. Richie snorted a laugh, unable to be helped. “It’s actually working a little,” he admitted. “...thanks.” Because he didn’t often get praise for trying to look into the future - mostly due to the fact that his attempts thus far haven’t yielded anything useful, and he had no clue what the fuck he was doing prior to actually receiving some instruction. “And thanks for your help. You’re okay too, right?” He didn’t know if being the power booster had any adverse effects. That would kind of suck. "Uh." Blue looked at her hands, turning them over to check. The tips were a little numb, and when she gave it thought, her body did feel cold. Nothing she hadn't experienced before, only it had been some time since she needed to give her energy over to someone else. She squeezed, making her delicate hands into tiny fists to help the circulation and shook her head. "I'm peachy," Blue said, shooting up from her seat. All four feet, eleven-ish inches of her. "No time for thanks. We've got to somehow put toothpaste back into the tube, or lava back into a volcano. Whatever metaphor you want to use. Either way, people are going to get cranky." Blue knew this, with certainty, because she was cranky that her vacation was over. Richie was up too, chuckling sardonically. “That’s not anything new, right?” The crankiness, anyway. But he supposed that, sure, after three-four days of complete bliss, just lying around in the sun and coming inside to shower and play video games until the wee hours of the morning, it was time for more fuckery. “But yeah, alright. Let’s do this thing.” He didn’t know much about how to stop a storm, but maybe - just maybe - if they all put their heads together, they’d figure it out. Or die trying. Worth a shot. |