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

Tony Stark | Marvel Future Avengers *Rolls in late with Starbucks*

[200percentextradad]

Lightning Strike

Tony knew technology wasn't working.

That didn't stop him from trying.

That being said, he had jury-rigged a lightning tower and climbed a tower, and hooked up a miniature generator cobbled together, to adjust for the wind, the temperature, and a contraption that would in theory be a backup for the magically powered Arc Reactor in his chest.

"If my math is correct, and it usually is, this should be the perfect solution. Now we just wait for it to charge up.

Ducking into an alcove, Tony waited for the perfect lightning strike to start the charging process on the makeshift arc reactor that was sitting in the middle of the platform. For a moment, he was back in the cave with Yin Sid, with a box of scraps. He didn't trust this magic to keep his heart becoming swiss cheese, no matter what the doctors said.

As Tony flipped through the Wizards equivalent of a k-pop magazine, a lightning strike struck the tower with a loud crash. "There we go!" Exclaimed Tony with a laugh. "Let's get another mother nature! We need five more!"


Labwork

tony was in the lab, checking his magical spellwork. At least something made sense in this hokey world that Dr. Strange would find more suitable. It was more his thing, than anything else. Holding up the vial, he swished it around and eyeballed the solution as it turned a bright pink.

"That looks... accurate," he muttered. Potions was a somewhat exact science, somewhat? Somehow?

Dropping in some root, he winced as it turned a lime green -- and began to sputter violently. With reflexes lone honed from superheroing, he exclaimed, "Everyone down!"

As Tony threw it into the bin as there was a loud detonation.

[darkenedmoon]

Yotsuyu waved a hand in front of her face, coughing the fumes out of her lungs. She stood and plucked the 'root' the man had carelessly tossed into his potion vial, and peered at the writing on the jar.

"Here is your problem," she stated coolly. "For what you were doing, you wanted acacia root. This is artemisia root. Wormwood. You are lucky you did not poison us all."

The tone of her voice clearly intimated she thought he was a dolt.

[200percentextradad]

"Well excuse me toots, but I'm more of a man of science, this is witches and wizardry at its finest Harry Potter style mixed in with Narnia," snarked Tony as he raised his goggles. "Some of us had actual science to do than spend time brewing potions for day to day use."

Grumbling he started in on a new vial. "Make potions they said, just like chemistry they said, this is nothing like chemistry! At least chemistry has ingredients with accurate values."

[darkenedmoon]

"These do have values. Accurate ones. If you use the precise ingredient the recipe calls for. This is not like your grandmama's cooking, where you can throw a pinch of whatever you like in there, and hope it is more spicy than she preferred!"

She grumbled beneath her breath, slightly. "As if I do not comprehend science, I did grow up in the Garlean Empire..." Though Yotsuyu supposed that there, it was magitek and not science, precisely.

But that was neither here nor there.

[200percentextradad]

"It would be nice if they came in precisely labeled bins instead of mismatched ones," said Tony, holding up the root jars and showing off, yes, someone had mislabeled the two with sloppy handwriting that looks like a child wrote them.

"Makoto has better writing than this, and he's got the patience of a five year old."

[darkenedmoon]

Yotsuyu narrowed her eyes and grunted at that. There was a good reason she maintained her own supplies when she could, and this man had just found out why.

"It figures, they gave you the cast offs. Here. Come here." She waved him over to the table that she had been working at.

"Use my materials, and try that." The handwriting might be slightly cramped, but it is quite legible--she's letting him use her own materials. So now there should be no problem. But she's only doing so because she has a point to make.

[200percentextradad]

"Fine if it makes you feel better."

Tony set to work, re-measuring the ingredients and performing the alchemy once more, and this time making it right. The liquid turned a pale blue and he said, "Huh, what do you know. It actually worked this time."

Lightning

[grim_heaper]

Another math geek building junk towers? Add one reaper! Sho ambled his way over, bullhorn swinging from his belt. "Zetta sweet," he said, studying the work as Tony ducked away. He didn't care he was getting rained on. He was dead, so it was hardly like he was going to get sick. So he was circling the tower, considering it, murmuring complex calculations under his breath.

Re: Lightning

[200percentextradad]

Tony was checking his math when he noticed Sho on the wind. "You know," he said, "Most people would probably avoid the rain and thunder in this weather," he called out as a second lightning strike struck the arc reactor. Checking his intervals, Tony doublechecked his work. "Twenty-thousand kilojoules. Not quite enough."

Re: Lightning

[grim_heaper]

"Most people aren't me," he said with a grin, putting his hands in his pockets and heading over. "You added this art to this zero of a square?"

Re: Lightning

[200percentextradad]

"My math is always correct, which it is," replied Tony, checking the arc reactor over before the next lightning strike. "Three more lightning strikes should do it. Normally I'd use 1.5 grams of palladilum to make this but we're fresh out in this world, so we'll have to improvise."

Retreating into the alcove to let mother nature do its work, he said, "Mother nature's on my side tonight. What's your take on this?"

Re: Lightning

[grim_heaper]

He grinned. "Reaaaaaly. Want to help me with something....?"

He shouldn't have to suffer his punishment alone.

Re: Lightning

[200percentextradad]

"Give me a while to finish this if that's all right with you," replied Tony, checking the skies for another lightning strike. "This is delicate work. I'm basically using nature to forge something that shouldn't exist in this world."

Labwork

[gender_neutral]

V had been mostly ignoring other people's work. There had to be a good way to make a potion of heroism from the ingredients here. They were all correct, but somehow... it just was not working.

Frustrated, V had been pushing a root aside when Tony called out and threw the vial. Without mage armor, V was a clothie with few hit dice. This person was clearly both at fault and a meat shield. Don't mind V, Tony. But the elf was very much diving for cover behind you.

Re: Labwork

[200percentextradad]

Fortunately the potion detonated with little fanfare in the bin, with little more than a fart in the wind as it sent up a smoke cloud. Tony pulled out a battery operated fan he carried on his person and blew it out the ventilation window. "Everyone okay?" he asked.

Re: Labwork

[gender_neutral]

"I for one appear to be substantially unharmed. This does simply serve as a reminder, yet again, that we have an absolute lack of primary healers. Even so, it seems to have done so little damage that even one of my frail elven constitution would not have taken any notable damage."

Re: Labwork

[200percentextradad]

"Yeah well, that's a problem for everyone in this place," said Tony as he checked over his work. "Not enough bitterroot for that one. Three milligrams and someone sloppily labeled the ingredients. I'm going to have a word with the supplier."

Re: Labwork

[gender_neutral]

"If you wish, I would be willing to lend several dozen words as well."

Re: Labwork

[200percentextradad]

"Considering the hack job they did with labels, I'm not surprised they set us up to fail this." grumbled Tony. "Aw well, such is life I suppose. But let's get this remade and we'll got talk to the supplier at the cabinets."

Lightning

[nobodys_puppet]

Xion had already been in the alcove, hiding from the weird person tinkering in the storm. But she had thought that he would be busy a while longer and had gotten distracted studying the shell she had been bringing back. So when he ducked into the alcove, she was startled and tried to scramble away... ideally before this odd Somebody noticed.

She was in a long black coat, her hood up hiding all but the very bottom of her face.

Re: Lightning

[200percentextradad]

Tony waited three seconds before another lightning crack split the skies before checking the readings. Friday was offline obviously, but he still had a little ability to measure out the old wattage and he was getting closer to his goal. Noticing Xion there, he said, "Hey, come here often in the wind and rain?"

Re: Lightning

[nobodys_puppet]

She frize, then reminded herself that it was okay if she was seen now... though Saïx being here had done a lot to set back her courage. "Wh...what?" she asked, confused by the question.

Re: Lightning

[200percentextradad]

"Just wondering kiddo. I haven't seen someone try to be one with the wall that hard since the last staff Christmas Party," replied Tony. "Tony Stark, and you?"

Re: Lightning

[nobodys_puppet]

A lot of that... made no sense to her. But for some reason being called kiddo made her think of Xigbar a little. She wasn't sure why.

But she tilted her head, curiously. "Why would a staff... have a party?" She was still unsure what a party was, but she thought it was a people thing, not a weapon thing.

Re: Lightning

[200percentextradad]

"Staff, as in people who work for you," replied Tony. "Like workers, businessmen, that sort of thing." Replied Tony.

"You never had a party before kid?"