I don't wanna be afraid of anything anymore.
Who: Carol and Vanille What: Rescuing and chatting When: Recent Where: the street Status: complete Rating: PG-13 for smashing semi-trucks
The semi-truck careened around the corner, out of control. The driver frantically tried to hit the breaks, but nothing happened. It barreled towards the unsuspecting people at a crosswalk.
There was a blur, and the truck came to an abrupt stop. It collapsed like an accordion, the front end pancaking around something and the trailer rising into the air, then slamming back down onto the street. From a haze of smoke, a blonde woman stepped away from the front of the truck.
Carol wiped blood from her nose, wincing at the lecture she was going to get from her girlfriend tonight, but it wasn’t like she could have just let the truck hit those people.
"Oh Goddess. Oh Goddess. OH..." Vanille had no magic to stop a speeding, out of control truck. Killing the driver of it wouldn't have accomplished anything, even if she could have summoned the nerve to do it. All she'd been left with was panicking with the rest of the people on the sidewalk, legs still a bit frozen with fear.
It hadn't even occurred to her that she summoned up a protective field around herself and the people on either side until she watched the blonde woman walk forward. Things had a distorted hexagonal pattern overlayed in front of them.
She took a deep breath, and then quickly unsummoned the shield, then noticed Carol, "Are you... are you okay? How did you do that? Oh gosh your nose is bleeding!"
“I’m all right,” Carol said, waving off any concern as to her own well being. Stupid, stupid, she’d had to fly just to move fast enough. She didn’t know what effect her strength would have. But stupid. She looked at the people and managed a smile. Stupid but worth it.
One bad car experience was enough for Vanille. At this rate she was thinking she needed to stop even being a pedestrian, but how would she get anywhere like that?
She looked back towards the front of the truck, then back at Carol, and squinted a bit, "Are you some kinda superhero?"
Carol looked around, then rubbed the back of her neck, and exhaled. “Kind of. Technically. You could say that.”
"It's okay if you don't want to talk about it too much! I have a friend who's a superhero, so I kinda understand! She's all kinds of amazing, but sometimes she just wants to keep a low profile, y'know?" Vanille grinned at Carol. She was turning into a superhero groupie, but that was alright.
Carol’s body glowed, and then she was there in full blue gold and red. She took Vanille’s hand and sped them off and away from the others. Less questions from other people. A block away she put Vanille down and checked her nose, but no bleeding. Good to know. She could probably jump too…
Vanille had let out a gasp in awe at the change in costume and the glow, then a squeaking noise when she'd been pulled away. Now that they were in another place and had come to a stop, she'd mainly been stunned into silence.
She stared at Carol, then stared off in the direction she thought they'd come from (thought, because it'd all been a blur and she couldn't be sure), then stared at Carol again. Her finger was pointing and her mouth was agape.
“Please don’t faint.” She held up her hands like she was trying to ward any fainting off from Vanille. “Just decided we needed to talk out of sight.”
"Oh! No... no, I'm not going to faint," Vanille shook her head a few times, then looked down at her pointing finger and let her hand drop to her side. Eyedarting a little, and with a sheepish grin, she added, "I just think... that was amazing! I mean... I've been terrified of bein' in something that fast, you shoulda seen what Belle had to do to get me on an airplane!"
“Oh.” She laughed nervously. “I’m sorry then, I hadn’t meant to freak you out. I’m just really used to going really fast.”
"I'm not too upset, no. I think it's kinda okay, maybe. Maybe not all fast things are gonna hurt you?" Vanille sounded like she was trying to solve some kind of puzzle, instead of making conversation, "Yeah, maybe that's what I gotta learn, I mean... not all planes crash, right? And sometimes Cars don't crash either, but that Truck almost did..."
Carol looked at Vanille like she was making zero sense. “Most planes don’t crash, really. It takes a pilot making a mistake or a freak accident. If you care for your plane and pay attention, every flight will be safe. Maybe not 100%? But safe.”
"Yeah, but there's still that one percent, isn't there?" Vanille asked, with fearful eyes. This was something she'd really never confronted. She was almost okay in a car if someone else was driving. Usually she just pretended she was on a bus, or closed her eyes and thought about walking very fast.
"Nothin's without risk, really... but we shouldn't let that fear consume us I guess."
“There’s that 1%, but no, you can’t let that 1% consume you. You can ignore it. Be aware of it but don’t let it freeze you up.” Carol nodded at her. “Because you can’t let 99% of your life pass you by.”
"What if the one percent made it so you spent ninety-nine percent of your life in a coma? Okay, it wasn't really ninety-nine percent, it was more like... I don't know how much it was. It was years." Vanille said, while fidgeting with her hands a bit.
“Well, that’s pretty terrible, but still, you can’t let that win.” She put her hand on Vanille’s shoulder. “Let yourself win, not your fear. Maybe I’ll take you flying some time. I have a plane.”
"There was a lady who was supposed to take me flying. She said she could turn into a dragon! But I guess she left. I was gonna try it anyway, 'cause who turns down a trip on a dragon?" Vanille babbled, while bouncing on her heels a bit.
She clapped her hands together, then, and nodded like she'd made a decision, "I don't wanna be afraid of anything anymore. I want to be tough, and make decisions. So I'm gonna go flying with you sometime."