Video

[soulsword]

Who; Illyana + OTA
What; Video post at Academy + Beach Shark
Where; Network, new beach, and Academy
When; Throughout the month of July, this is a catch all
Warnings;None.


A. [ V I D E O ]

[ The video feed opens to what some may recognize as the Academy that randomly appeared a while ago. It's not in the greatest condition as shown by the camera moving around. Whose moving the camera? Good question, because it eventually focuses to reveal Illyana floating in the air upside down with her legs folded one across the other.

It's a very normal way to address people. Don't question it. ]

So, I guess we've just got this place now, huh? Clean up crew that came in really could have done a slightly better job. [ No judgement though. Well, maybe some judgement, but that's Illyana: snarky and judgmental. A brief glimpse of her imps working to clean up some rubble can be seen in the background here and there. Followed by a very loud CRASH sound and Illyana snapping: ]

Hey! Be careful back there. [ Is she concerned they'll get hurt? No. Maybe She sighs and then returns to addressing the camera. ]

I was thinking maybe I could teach here. That's what it was used for before right? Not sure how many of you would have the talent, but it'd be something to do. [ And boy is she bored. ]

B. Night of the Shark

Illyana arrived at the beach in the afternoon wearing an actual bikini and giant sunglasses that looked like they belonged in the 80s. Try not to judge her too much, they were in style back when she went to beach parties with her friends. Imagine that, she thought to herself as she walked up to the shore. It felt like it was a different life that she was at a beach with all the other New Mutants. In a way it was, but that was more complicated than she wanted to spend time thinking about. Same could be said for the majority of her life both there and here now. Everything somehow got complicated when you thought about how you felt. Really had a way of killing the mood. Or at the very least for making the mood more sticky and twisty. Yup, that's exactly how she'd describe her weird feelings.

At least this place changed every now and then. That served as a way to at least attempt to find a distraction from weird things like remoistening about the past (she missed her friends) or thinking about the future (why did she want to see him right now?). The fact that the arrival of a beach just seemed to be making her sad was not lost on her as she wandered up and down the shore. She kept away from people as the sun began to set and barely paid any attention to anyone else around. This wasn't what people meant when they suggested she try to be more social. To add to the antisocial look she kept her sunglasses on even as the sun completely set.

That was when she noticed something out of the corner of her eyes that looked suspiciously like a fin.

"Well, well, well, what have we here?" A new project. That's what she'd found here. And so began her nighttime adventures with a landshark. Illyana can be found out at the beach at night sitting on a rock casting some sort of spell. Occasionally she can also be found...riding something. That's right, she's learned how to ride a landshark. Only a bit of it's body can be seen sticking out of the sand, mostly it ends up looking like she's just gliding on some sort of large rock. Gliding on it and having a stupid amount of fun. Not that she's going to admit to that part.

Comments

[soulsword]

"Are sandcastles really creative?" She asked with a smirk. "Are you secretly a sandcastle artist?" she waved a hand. "Go on then. Make one. Impress me."

[asthecroweflies]

"Depends on how invested you are in sculpting, I guess. My dad was a woodworker. I guess I picked it up from him." He shrugged. "Alright, but without tools, I'm not promising perfection, and what are you going to do?"

[soulsword]

"I could get you tools if you need them," she said with a smile. "Though do you really need them for dealing with sand?"

[asthecroweflies]

"Well, sure, if you want something more than a few random stacks of dirt." He smiled. "Any tools you use to model clay would work, and a bucket or two. I can come with if you like."

[soulsword]

She laughs and then waves a hand, summoning up a portal above him that drops down a collection of tools. "No need to go anywhere. Will any of those work?"

[asthecroweflies]

He's convinced, no matter how many times she does something like that, he's not going to get used to it, but at least this time he doesn't jump. Instead, he looks around at all the things she'd summoned, a few carving tools, buckets...

"Yeah, I think so. Prepare to be mildly impressed." When he was younger, before his father had sunken into a pit of self-loathing so deep he couldn't pull himself out of it anymore, they used to go to the beaches of Lake Michigan on holiday over summer. Jagger had never had friends, really, everyone had thought him to be weird, but he and his father had made do. Sandcastles were a way for them to bond without needing to actually talk.

He moved closer to the water, where the sand was wetter, and took a small spade, filling a pail with sand. "You want to help or watch?"

[soulsword]

She laughed and then folded one leg over the other and lifted above the ground again. "If I'm to be impressed, I will simply watch and wait. Go on. Impress me."

[asthecroweflies]

"And you're just going to watch?" Of course she was just going to watch. "No pressure or anything, yeah?"

With no clear idea where he was going with this sculpture, he started by packing the bucket full of sand and stacking them atop one another to make a tower three times the height of the bucket, and then he grabbed a small trowel.

"Do you have any requests?"

[soulsword]

"Should I go away for a bit and come back?" She tilted her head and shrugged. "No pressure at all." Except there was probably just a bit of pressure. It shouldn't be that bad though, right? It was just a sandcastle.

"Baroque perhaps?" It reminded her of home, not that she'd admit to that readily.

[asthecroweflies]

He shook his head. "You don't have to, love, but I figured this would be something we'd do together."

Baroque, huh? The first structure that actually came to mind was Notre Dame in Paris. He could work with that.

"Unless you'd prefer to levitate and supervise."

[soulsword]

"I always prefer to levitate and supervise," she said with a grin. "Piotr is an artist. He used to make elaborate snow castles for me. He would say they were for his Princess. Like the ones in Moscow." Evidently her brother hadn't known how terrible being a princess really was.

"I was never as artistic as him." Because she'd never had the chance. Though, really, if you counted what she made with her spells and illusions, she was quite creative.

[asthecroweflies]

"Yeah?" He stopped in his piling of sand to look up to her, frowning slightly.

"I've seen some of the things you can do, love. You're plenty artistic." He looked over to the growing mounds he was assembling, then back to her. "Why don't you come down here and we'll work on it together. I'll make whatever you want."

[soulsword]

After a few seconds of deliberation she unfolded her legs and came down to kneel next to him.

"Fine, but this is your project. You're meant to impress me." So she wasn't going to do much.

[asthecroweflies]

"Fair enough." But he's going to take her joining him in the sand as the victory it is, at least for a little while.

"So, Baroque, but I'm not too familiar with Moscow architecture. What do you have in mind?"

[soulsword]

"Hmm," she waved a hand and an image appeared next to them of church. It was blurry, shimmering as the wind blew, but it at least showed the general shape.

"This."

[asthecroweflies]

He nodded, looking over the illusion before setting to work shaping parapets. They weren't exact, but he was rusty and his father had been a better carver. That and he was desperately out of practice.

"So, does the church have a story or do you just like it?"

[soulsword]

"No story," she said with a shrug as she slowly worked on a small tower on her own. It wasn't overly impressive but it held the general shape of the illusion that still floated in front of them.

"And it seemed complicated." Mostly it reminded her of home.

[asthecroweflies]

"So, you're saying you chose it because it would be hard for me to pull off." He smiled at the idea though, rather than being annoyed. Her constant pushing him was starting to feel more like a game than anything malicious.

"And that's it? No other reason?"

[soulsword]

"Maybe," she said with a tiny smile. "Maybe I also sometimes think of home." She wasn't going to say she missed it, but sometimes she wanted a reminder. "And maybe I want to see you impress me for a change." Ha. She couldn't help but rib a little more.

[asthecroweflies]

He smiled slightly at her comment, nodding. "I think it says something you still call Russia home." After all she'd been through, it was impressive.

And that second comment brought out a chuckle. "Are you telling me I've never once impressed you? Really?"

[soulsword]

"That I've had few homes?" she said with a shrug. "What other place would be my home? Limbo? The place where my torment began? The school that was destroyed?" Really, what did she even have? Nothing. And that...made her look down and back at the castle, focusing herself on building little parts of it.

"Hmm," she stopped what she was doing to think. "You haven't been too afraid of me." That was impressive. Sort of.

[asthecroweflies]

"I understand, love, at least in part." He hadn't had many places to call home, either. In fact, he couldn't remember a place that felt like one, not in a very long time, possibly since before his mother passed. "I may not have been raised in a hell dimension, but the house I grew up never really felt like a home, either."

He smiled over to her, empathic to the extent he could be at least. "Yeah. I wonder what that says about me."

[soulsword]

"No? And why is that?" He'd told her a bit here and there, but she would have asked regardless. The faster the subject was turned away from her the better.

"Nothing good." At least she could poke fun at herself.

[asthecroweflies]

He was keenly focused on carving, with the smaller tool she's fetched, the pillars hovering in illusion nearby, and his brow furrowed when she asked. He didn't talk much about his past, but he supposed they had that in common.

"When I was a kid, we lived in south London, and...after my mother passed, da just uprooted us and flew us to the US. 'We need a do-over' he said, but it never really...felt like home, you know? It didn't help that he rarely tried spending time with me or...anything. Maybe that's...normal, I dunno."

He shrugged, smiling slightly without looking over. "We're a pair, yeah?"

[soulsword]

"Doesn't sound like much of a do-over. Sounds more like running away." And she knew something about running away from problems. "Doesn't sound too normal." When her parents had been alive they'd all spent a lot of time with each other.

"A pair of what?"