Test Drive #3

[magicademymods]

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.)

Comments

[mithrarin]

"...You're kidding," Dust said, in the tone of one who knew she wasn't. There was no reason at all to lie about something like that, as he well knew. And every reason not to admit that truth either.

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

"I promise you I can think of better jokes than that." Isabel sighed at that. But she shrugged, then.

"I can't make you do anything though. Honestly if I had better underpants on, I'd probably just lose my pants, but..."

Her shirt wasn't long enough to cover, and there's a nice little lacy bit trailing over one hip. She's well aware that there are plenty of teenaged boys here to distract, so she's keeping her gigantic trousers where they'll cover as much as she can manage right now.

[mithrarin]

Dust wasn't one of them -- in that respect, Isabel had sort of lucked out? The idea of finding a human attractive had yet to occur to him, what with their strange head anatomy and general lack of fur.

"I'd kind of like my pants to fit again. If that's what we have to do, that's what we have to do. I'll help you too."

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

He wouldn't strike Isabel as a teenaged boy either, but it wouldn't be the first time someone's looks had deceived her, really.

"I'm not exactly sure on how to do it. It was pretty awkward to watch, but it worked..." She thought a moment. His were mostly down...her cheeks colored, then, but she kept going.

"Maybe if you kept yours down and I stepped into them?" This was certainly the weirdest plan she'd ever come up with, but not doing anything would get exactly nothing fixed, either. Isabel got to her feet carefully, drawing her pants up with her, and stepped forward so she was within the wading-pool-sized puddle of Dust's pants.

"Here goes nothing!" With her luck, it wouldn't work, and she'd just be embarrassed.

[mithrarin]

"Right, and then mine will fit again so I can... do the same for you." Dust let go of one side of the pants, letting her reach for them as he inched over as far as he could without pulling them away. The last thing she needed was to trip on him and send them both tumbling, tied up in his clothing.