diatuooc | Test Drive #3

Test Drive #3

Lightning Crash

The weather over the floating island of Ascelion during spring months is best described as "hellacious"; its elevation puts it right among the worst of stormclouds and fuels their thunderous fire as they sweep past it and electrically scrape against its sides. Rain is frequent, but lightning is almost constant, along with thunderous rumbles that roll across the city and the open spaces of the Magicademy like waves.

But today is particularly bad. Webs of electricity crackle through the sky, jumping from cloud to cloud or grounding themselves on towers of the Magicademy angrily. None of them seem to endanger the students, but there's a first time for everything, isn't there? As titanic fury threatens to tear the sky in half, do you risk stepping into the outside? Does the infrasonic rumbling trigger fear or terror in your gut, as such deep waves are known to do? Perhaps you've learned a spell that will protect you. Or perhaps you've poorly learned a spell that may or may not protect you...

Wand Wrong Way

The rumors around campus speak of a small and musty store deep in the Merchant District, on a side road to a side road, where only those in-know go to find items that would surely draw too much notice if displayed publicly. Powdered dragon tail, eye of sphinx, swords Forged with magic-cutting spells, and most valuable of all, the Gateway Wand. Surely this legendary wand, in which the full power of Sundering hums, could get you and your friends back home.

Rumors are pretty lousy with directions, though. The Merchant District offers ample chance to get lost, to get distracted, or to stumble down the wrong alley and find hoodlums all too eager to extract "tolls" from the lost and seemingly helpless. Does your adventure become disaster? Does this rumored shop even exist?

Pantalones Giganticus

At its heart, Modification seems like the most simple of schools. What could be more simple than arithmetic? Therefore, Modification also has the steepest and most shocking learning curve of all, as it rapidly balloons to more complicated mathematical expressions, more variables in the formulae, and above all more chance for error.

So really, the mistake is an honest one. Any hurried student, probably in their third or fourth year of study, could accidentally introduce an unnecessary factor into their equation. That is probably why your pants are now sized for someone four times large than you. (Not four sizes. Four times.) Worse, this has happened to EVERYONE -- the entire population of the Magicademy, student and staff and faculty alike, are trundling around in blown-up bloomers, too-large trousers, not-conveniently-sized knickers... you get the idea.

Now the bad news: to fix the error in formula and restore your pants to normal size, someone else has to get in them with you.

Labwork

Not every magical disaster is caused by some wayward student you don't know. Many of them are caused by you instead. To wit: you're on the spot in one of the magical labs, being called on to demonstrate a technique more advanced than others you've mastered so far. Failure is expected, and the wards should prevent any injury to others from a miscast spell. But will the sparks of your magic just sputter out and die? Or will you inadvertently mispronounce, misform, misshape, or miscalculate in a way that brings chaos to you and your lab partner?

(You could also manage to succeed in casting the spell, but that isn't very fun.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Oh, butts," Isabel says. "I was sure I had it, too! At least this won't last too long." She still sighs, though. About a day's worth of vibrant blue hair isn't bad...save for the exact problem Noa has already touched on.

"It'd probably be all right if we were in primary colors, it's that orange that's really going to kill it." Because blue and orange were opposing on the color wheel. Blegh.

"I suppose using a guitar would've been better, but that's not as portable as this thing is, and the theory should be the same! I know how to read music..." She's only annoyed, not angry, but it's still frustrating. "Are you going to try it?"

Isabel does want to see if he can do her one better--but she also doesn't want him to end up in the same predicament, which is why it's questioning and not a flat out challenge.

"Mnnn, that is the upside." One good thing about most of the spells they're figuring out- they're temporary.

As it is, he has an impressively dry laugh. "And now you know how I feel," he snorts, his own head of hair clashing fairly wonderfully against both colours. "Mnh, it wouldn't be much use if I didn't make the attempt though, so..."

It's been fairly interesting for him (and no doubt Isabel, and others), to add this level of analysis to music writing. It's one thing to consider the appeal of the sound- adding the levels of control is a fascinating study that has proven more than fruitful thus far. "Hnnn, perhaps, the pitch limitations in our instruments..." he mutters, eyeing his rock and bringing the ocarina pendant to his lips.

A few notes through the air, and for a moment it seems nothing really happens. And then-

"Aha! A change. Though green is-" About halfway into that statement, he realizes what's happened and scowled. "...My hair is ashen now, isn't it."

It's swapped with the rock.

Isabel's face goes long, long, into something of a smirk. Really, she's trying very hard to not laugh, as she hasn't got a leg to stand on, and a long fall of waist-length blue hair to show for her efforts.

But it fails, and a little giggle does escape her, as she lifts a hand to cover her mouth.

"You look like a mini-grandpa," she informs him. "But you have to admit, it does go better with the House colors!" And she giggles again. "At least for the next day or so."

"And you're blue," he grumbles reflexively, gently looking upward to try and catch sight of his bangs. "Ugh. No wonder we're doing basic things first. Anything really impressive and we'd probably have lost our eyes or some nonsense..."

...

"...and it does match..." Still not his colour though. Deciding not to dwell, he presses on into the matter at hand.

Namely figuring out how to get these stupid rocks to change colour (correctly). "Well, at least the pitch seemed to be on to something. Perhaps it involves the subject matter for the spell then?" Other than that, they seemed to have played their notes perfectly as far as his ears could tell.

"Da ba dee, da ba di," Isabel mutters to herself. "That's probably true. No thank you, I want all my body parts intact."

She paused, then. "Match, not quite, but it's neutral, so it goes better with your robes than blue...or green." But it was going to revert...hopefully, so.

"That's just it, I thought so too...and our instruments aren't the type to need tuning, usually." She gives her penny whistle a good looking over for dents or flaws. None. That just makes her frown. "I really don't have a clue. Were the notes off? Did we play the tune wrong--the tune itself, not the pitch or tone?"

It takes a moment to realize what was just referenced.

He firmly refuses to admit that he knows what was referenced, as well.

Noa scowls a little more overtly as he pours over the music sheets again, grumbling. "It doesn't make sense- we read this perfectly, a musical scale can't be that different between separate worlds! Ours were the same," he adds, huffing.

~~Granted, they also both come from relatively modern worlds...~~

"I know!" She's not exactly angry, just frustrated at their foibles, at the moment. But his comment about the musical scale, she gives him a startled look.

"Noa," she breathes, eyes going wide. "What if we weren't just supposed to repeat the whole piece on the same scale? Transposition? If we were supposed to scale it up or down by fifths as we went..."

Well, it was a clue to finding the end of their problems, at least.

The boy opens his mouth. And then closes his mouth, gluing his attention back to the scale of notes. It couldn't possibly be like that. Transposition??? No, terrible, they're using whistles and ocarina, and-

"............part of the magic is the play of words isn't it...."

They're making a rock look blue. They're....Transposing it....

He hates this class ~~he loves this class~~.

"...There's only one way to find out..." he starts slowly, eyeing Isabel's penny whistle.

Noa was right, so Isabel just put her whistle to her lips and began. Her brow furrowed in concentration, because it took more effort to actually transpose on an ocarina or whistle. It took monitoring your breathing...being conscious of the notes. Focus. She couldn't get excited or...well, who knew what else might turn blue?

But slowly, her plain white stone deepened in color, slowly changing from white to shimmery blue as she played. Best of all, it stayed that color once she stopped.

"Ahaaaa..." Noa isn't too excited- not yet anyway, it was Isabel's rock and not his after all- but he certainly gives a small smile as the rock turns, and stays blue.

"Alright...my turn then," he hums, bringing the ocarina back to his lips. Time to try some transposing...this is definitely going to be tricky, given he was more familiar with stringed instruments than wind.

Particularly cheap clay wind instruments.

"I believe in you! You can do it!" Isabel didn't mind being Noa's own personal pep squad. At least she wasn't bouncing at the moment, and she quieted quickly to give him quiet and room to concentrate, as well.

She could not help squirming a little bit, however, as his rock seemed to be lightening slightly. Both hands lifted to her mouth and she shoved them against her lips to prevent herself from squeaking, or squealing, or something else that was fairly undignified.

Hahaaaah...he's going to try and not think about how similar that is to Yugi and his friends...

(It's appreciated, albeit a bit distracting)

Notes passing through the air, he tries to pay Isabel no mind for the moment, if at least to focus. The rock does seem to be moving from that odd green blend to a blue now- so that's an upside.

Hair is still gray though. Ah. That's probably going to require a bit more work.

Well, it isn't as if hers is darkening back to auburn from blue, after all. That will either take work, as Noa supposes, or time, as Isabel herself hopes.

But she's wiggling like an excited puppy, so something's going on. Probably success, and it's all she can do to not cheer again, or something either more or less dignified.

Test Drive #3

Isabel likes music. ^.^

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