Day 2: Morning

[wizardseason]

Morning: 6:00am - 12:00noon

[ IRL Timeframe: March 17th - March 25th March 31st, 2019 (Buffer week added) ]

It's a bright new morning and the first monster has been defeated, the first hurdle has been cleared and everything is going great. The heroes should be feeling good, everything should be going according to plan. Especially because when the heroes wake up this morning, they'll be treated to a set of kigurumi pajamas themed after their animal companion sitting right beside them. Each set has a little note on it that says "From me to you" with a stylized "Wizard" signature beside it.

The morning should prove fairly uneventful. In striking comparison to the first day, the island is much quieter than it was before. Instead, the day's celebration is centralized on the train that circles the island. One eight-car train is circling the entire island, taking a little over an hour and a half to make its circles. It's 30 minutes between each city and the train isn't stopping. Each car on the train is open and any hero can board it free of charge. There are party cars, food cars, and lounge cars to enjoy on the trip around the island. There are also some commemorative prints and products available near the caboose of the train, some sellers having already gotten hard at work to create products to sell. They're seeking to get a seal of approval from the heroes themselves on them!

For the Princess and the Protector as well as the Wizard and her evil-allured knights, their dream threads will go on until the Second Monster arrives.

Most importantly, a certain knight has a message for the rest of his allies at the bright and early hour of 6:30am.

Second Morning Event: All Cities: The Celebration Train.

---

The Weather

• Slightly Windy.
• 64°F / 18°C
• The trees are rustling, flower petals in the air.

---

Prompts:

• 6:30am Punch Club, Bamborough: A message reaches the group with... an attached video? Opening the file shows Garrot staring straight at his phone's camera with a big smile. "Rise and shine, team!"


• x:xxam Train Ride: The party train is available for any hero who finds it. It'll be rolling through Far Haven at 6am, 7:45am, 9:30am, and 11:15am. It'll be rolling through Bamborough at 6:35am, 8:20am, 10:05am, and 11:50am. It'll be rolling through Craydon at 7:10am, 8:55am, 10:40am, and... well, this post only goes until noon. The next stop in Craydon is out at 12:25pm which is in monster arrival territory. While on the train, your hero can get up to anything. Will they discuss with the others what they think of the first line of hero products? Does this action figure look funny? Do these stickers look okay? Discuss and deal with vendors or just party it up elsewhere on the train!


• 10:30am, Power Plant, Far Haven: Social Media is abuzz that the Wizard has made an appearance in the power plant in Far Haven. She could wipe power out to the whole island if she wanted to, she could turn the connections to chocolate, or she could just be standing around. She hasn't done anything as far as the cell phone videos show, but is that going to last?


• 11:30am, Relaxing Time, Craydon: The residents of craydon, with the assistance of some of their kids, sent out invitation videos to ask the Princess and knights if they wanted to drop by Craydon and join in a meditation session. They're going to meditate outside, in the woods, and relax as much as possible before the next monster arrives. The residents of Craydon are emphasizing how important it is to keep mentally healthy above all else. Which of your fellow heroes have joined in on this session?

---

Procedure:

Reply to the appropriate toplevel comments for events below. Indicate if a post is a private conversation with "Private" in the subject otherwise all threads should be open to interaction with others. Plan OOCly how you'd like to toss everyone around.

Comments

[tropicalstorm]

"Oh, that's cool!" Haizea says when Joanna levitates the ball, impressed. She's always been interested in people who had innate powers like that, she's pretty sure her own affinity for learning dumb people tricks barely counts as a power.

When Joanna holds in place, Haizea walks up to it and tries putting her own weight on it too, eventually pushing as hard as she can. "Wow, it's really stuck there, huh? I think this as it is could be really useful as a trap, maybe if we could trick a monster into going somewhere, but then you freeze an object in front of it, it would run into and take damage that way. What happens when you let it go?"

[fauntofwisdom]

"I've always thought so," she admits with a pleased little smile. It took practice to get here, to where focus alone moves objects. As a child, it took a little more gesturing accompanying the visualization. Having the work pay off - to where it garners compliments - is a good portion of why she shelves books in tall elaborate sculptures in her shop.

Once they're experimenting with the ball, ready to move to the next step, Joanna gestures for Haizea to move away away from the ball. "I've only tried it once, but... if what happened to my morning coffee is any indication, we should probably step back a few paces."

She does so herself, hooves clacking across the painted concrete of the basketball court. And once Joanna's a good dozen feet away, and Haizea's looking ready to continue, she tries relaxing the hold on the ball with an arm covering her face. The ball shoots off immediately, away from Haizea in the direction she'd been pushing it - the last direction anything had nudged it in.

[tropicalstorm]

Haizea whistles appreciatively when the ball takes off like a rocket away from the court and into the underbrush surrounding the gym.

"That's one hell of a projectile! I know only knight weapons and powers can hurt the monsters, but I wonder if an object you use your power on will hurt one, even if it's not a knight weapon? Too bad we can't test that out!"

She pulls out two basketballs this time and holds them out to Joanna. "So let's test something else; how many things can you stop at once with your power?"

[fauntofwisdom]

Whatever Joanna expected to see happen, that abrupt shot was not it - that far surpassed it. She gasps and titters from the surprise of it, more relieved than she can say.

She has a knight power, and it can do something.

"Maybe to knock them off track," Joanna begins to theorize, before Haizea presents her with two balls - and a challenge. She nods, biting her lip as she accepts them. After a moment of staring at the balls, focusing her power on them, she pulls her hands away quickly.

One ball bounces and spins a little so it rolls around to bump her ankle. The other freezes in the air as before, with the slightest hint of yellow glow surrounding it - though the morning sunlight shining on everything covers it up pretty well.

It seems that, like the knight weapons need to be effectively one piece, her stasis power works on things that are effectively one piece, too. Maybe if they tied the balls together.

[tropicalstorm]

"Hmm," Haizea intones, as she looks at the single floating basketball. "Looks like you got a hard limit of one item at a time. We can work with that, though. How long do you feel like you can hold it? Does it get harder to hold it when force is applied?" She whacks the basketball lightly to illustrate.

[fauntofwisdom]

These are sensible sorts of questions to ask - exploring the limits of the power, testing its norms and outer edge cases. The sorts of things that are easier to think of, when watching a character on a screen or in a book - even when the character's real, like the grainy footage of knights from previous years. Now that she's the one in the moment, aware of pressure of everyone's expectations and the world's fate, it's a little more difficult to think quite so clearly.

"Hmm. I don't notice it getting harder to hold from the force," Joanna says, and reaches forward to tap the ball several times in quick succession. "You would think that it would. But... even when we're not tapping at it, it is getting... tighter, I suppose you could say. Like an elastic held too long." The faint light around the ball pulses, with increasing speed, as she frowns at it and concentrates on keeping it in place. It'll only last a moment or two.

[tropicalstorm]

"I guess the other question is if there's a time limit," she says, looking closely around the ball and giving it another whack for good measure. "Does this flashing mean it's gonna release on its own, even if you don't let it go on purpose?"

Thankfully, the direction Haizea has just hit it in would aim it safely out of harms way, but she is standing pretty close to it, close enough to feel the air that's displaced by the force it outputs when it shoots off.

[fauntofwisdom]

"This is the first time I've tried it, so I can't say for certain," Joanna takes a step or two back, trepidatious about not yet knowing that or what determines its direction. What if it hits one of them, and injures her on only the second day? "But that's plausible, and I suppose we'll soo--"

That is absolutely what the flashing means, as becomes clear the time it flashes a little brighter than before - and the ball's released flying off in the direction Haizea last nudged it. Joanna hisses a breath in as it goes flying across the court.

"Oh, my word. It felt like something snapped."

[tropicalstorm]

“Whoa!” she exclaims, and jumps back when the ball shoots away across the court.

“Did it hurt when it snapped? Or was it more like cracking your knuckles?” she asks, and absentmindedly cracks her own knuckles. “If it did hurt, are you alright? Do you want to keep practicing or call it quits for now?”

[fauntofwisdom]

"It doesn't - ah, that's a good comparison," she says with some surprise. "A sudden released tension, it... it stings, but I think it's already fading."

Joanna shakes her hands out, anyway. The sensation isn't quite in them, but that's the closest her body has to offer, and it distracts from the feeling.

"...But, I'm a little worried about one of these flying free, and hitting some innocent passerby. Maybe I could try practicing some more, in a batting cage, where there's fences meant for projectiles..."

[tropicalstorm]

"Hmm," Haizea thinks. "I'm not sure where there's battin' cages 'round here, Garrot and I were lucky to find this place as fast as we did. Maybe we could switch to lighter projectiles? Like maybe ping pong balls? At least until you feel comfortable controllin' what direction they fly in, then come back to larger items to see just how much damage you can output."

Haizea doesn't want to overwhelm her, but she's curious about whether there's a size or weight limit to what Joanna can use her power on. Would it work on a bowling ball? An anvil? A car?