prismatica | text; un: ems

If things get out of hand, I'll keep my firefighter boyfriend's number handy. The outskirts of Level 3 are probably a safe bet. No one really lives there, and we can probably find a spot far away from any Moon Knights.

Probably won't be a big fire anyway. I can't imagine setting a fire the traditional way is going to be easy.

Meet me there in an hour?

[He gave her an address, far on the edge of town, pretty much as far away from the Moon Knight's Outpost as you could get. Whenever she did arrive, Lio was already coaxing a fire in an old oil drum, dumping garbage in it to get the flames to blaze hotter. He wore a sleeveless tank top to better withstand the heat, though a firefighter's jacket was tied around his waist with a big number 3 across the sleeve and the back, just to really add to the irony of what he was doing.]

[ She texts confirmation then gets off the phone. It sounds fine. She's almost a little disappointed that it's already started by the time she got there, but it's not big enough that she can't help. At least it's not hard to figure out who she's looking for. ]

You better be "fotia" and I didn't just stumble on some rando trying to start a fire in a remote location.

[ At least she's armed in case he isn't who she's looking for. Emerald may have a lot of issues and anger, but she's at least confident in her ability to kick some ass. ]

[Lio furrowed a brow at her as she approached, tossing some loose newspaper into the oil drum for kindling.]

Lio Fotia. [He responded. Yes his username was really just his last name. He actually wasn't aware it was also the Greek word for fire.] You're 'ems'? E M S? [Lio gestured to some junk he'd collected, piled up beside him.] We can start a bonfire. I mostly made this one as a starter, to see if I could. Never started a fire the old fashioned way before.

Emerald Sustrai.

[ Emerald isn't aware her last name is Basque for "thief" either, or else she probably wouldn't use her last name. ]

How big do you think we can get it?

[ She peers over at the pile and goes to see if there's anything in there. She already has an idea. ]

Did you bring any lighter fluid or anything?

Emerald.

[Lio repeated with a short nod. He shrugged, in response to her first question.]

Not sure. Before, I could have set the whole city ablaze. [Said with all the confidence of someone who'd definitely done it before - though his shoulders did seem to sag a bit, like he wasn't all that proud of it.] It took me ages just to get this going.

But all I had was this. [Lio pulled a cigarette lighter out of his pocket, pink transparent plastic showing the fluid inside to have been half used up. It already looked pretty well worn.] Like I said, I'm not used to setting fires the old fashioned way. I could see about hitting up a convenience store for some, though, if you think we need it.

[ She puts her hands on her hips. ]

Let's do that. I want to douse something in it and throw it in to see if it'll explode.

[ Otherwise she's just getting flashbacks to trying to start a fire in an alley trash can so she didn't freeze to death when she was younger. She doesn't sound super excited or anything, but she's putting effort in to try this. ]

[Lio pocketed his lighter once more, glancing back down the street in the direction of a few corner shops.]

You wanna keep an eye on this and I'll go grab some? I won't be more than five minutes, and I've got Chroma to burn. [All he had to do was look for a bottle of liquid that had a big fire symbol with a bunch of warning labels, right? Piece of cake.] Probably not a good idea if we leave a fire unattended, even if it's contained.

Yeah. I'll try and find some rocks to make an extra barrier around here.

[ To help contain it.. she'll give it a wide breadth though so they can go to town but.. it's probably better to not make it really really easy to start a wildfire or something that gets out of their control. ]

I'll be right back.

[True to his word, Lio only spent five to ten minutes down the road, shopping at the nearest convenience corner shop, coming back with an armful of charcoal, and a shopping bag with like four bottles of lighter fluid. They were lucky it was barbeque season.]

Here. This should be more than enough. Not sure if anything will explode, unless you want me to grab some propane, but it's probably not a good idea if we're trying not to get caught.

[ Emerald managed to find rocks to put around it, though it's questionable how effective it will be because they're not really consistently sized- it's not always an easy task to find perfect rocks, especially in a city. Some of them are crystals she found growing, others are like, weird concrete chunks she found nearby or actual rocks. IT's a circle okay, she didn't have a long time to look. ]

Well, if nothing explodes, it'll be a bigger fire?

[ Or some wooshes maybe.. she's definitely not a pyromaniac. What she is is someone who is going to take one of those bottles and start dousing some junk with the intention of throwing it at the fire-- which is still going at about the same level as it was before. ]

[Better than nothing, right? Probably. Hopefully.

Lio wasn't going to question it.

Instead he was going to start grabbing more scrap to throw in, gathering it together for Emerald to start dousing as well.]

Should we try to keep it in the drum? Safer, maybe. Not as satisfying, but safer.

[God he hoped Galo didn't find out about this somehow.]

Yeah. That's the plan.

[ What Emerald wants to do is decidedly not fire safety oriented. Once she has doused her item in the lighter fluid, she picks it up and does a jump shot to throw it into the current fire, which bursts into embers and bigger flames for the duration of the lighter fluid bring burned up. ]

[Fireball basketball? That actually was pretty satisfying, to see the flames jump up in the air in excitement at the fuel soaked piece of trash.

Lio followed Emerald's lead, wadding up some newspaper that he'd coated in the stuff, and tossing it high into the air, watching it arc into the drum. The flames jumped once more, licking upwards happily at the fuel.

Lio should have found himself smiling. Instead he was frowning, gritting his teeth.]

... Let's make it a competition. Whoever can get the flame to jump highest is the winner.

[ Emerald looks at him for a moment, thoughtfully, then closes her lighter fluid bottle and tosses it in. Like, the whole bottle, with the lid on so it'll make pressure inside the bottle as it heats and ignites. It's definitely going to explode and she's already backing away so she doesn't get hurt.

Like that was definitely not fire safety 101. But that's her best idea to jump the flame as high as she can.

(Or maybe wide? She doesn't know.) ]

[Lio watched her, curiously, before realizing she was planning to chuck the whole bottle in. His eyes grew wide and he reached out to her - ]

Wait, I don't think you should -

[And into the fire it went, Lio's mouth a bit agape as he grabbed Emerald by the arm to drag her even further back. And, roughly twenty seconds later, it did indeed explode - loud and high and spraying flaming debris all across the alley.]

Fuck!

[Lio went to grab a nearby bucket of water he'd set aside just in case, dousing the worst of the flames, while working to stomp on some of the other embers with his thick soled boots.]

Fine, you win! This was a stupid idea!

[ Emerald's been in an entire city on fire so this weirdly doesn't seem like that bad to her, and she's got her aura to protect her from any immediate damage from the flames. But it feels like a rush-- her adrenaline is pumping, which is what she wanted. She gives a glance to Lio and then sighs and takes the outer layer of her top off, leaving her bandeau on, and uses it to smother and stomp out some of the flames. ]

The trash fire was depressing anyway.

Probably because I'm a depressing person. [He said in irritation - though he was really irritated with himself more than anything. Obviously this fire wasn't the worst he'd seen, it was barely a spark compared to the worst fire he'd ever single-handedly been responsible for, but he was keenly aware that he wasn't immune to being burnt alive any longer.

And the guilt at causing a fire hazard while dating a firefighter was starting to really eat at him. The explosion had just been a really hard kick to his conscience.

He let out an exasperated sigh.]

I hope you got something out of this. I didn't. Sorry I dragged you out here, Emerald.

Happy people piss me off anyway.

[ She's fine with that. It's not him that she's complaining about. After a couple of seconds she adds: ]

I used to set fires in barrels like that when I was younger. It's a good way to keep warm on the streets, but now it's just.. [ Not something she wants to go back to. ]

It doesn't matter. My heart's pounding, so at least that's not anger for a few minutes.

[Lio couldn't help the little breath of a laugh that had escaped him at her 'happy people' comment. Lio didn't necessarily feel the same way, but he could certainly relate.

He beat one more of the smoldering fires with his own jacket. The thing was probably better suited to the job anyway, being made of some pretty advanced fireproof material.]

Sorry, to bring back bad memories. I grew up homeless, too, and on the run.

[Lio snatched his jacket back up, brushing the soot off the interior.]

I mostly lived out in the desert, though. Less cops out there trying to hunt us. We only ever stopped by towns to steal supplies, so I didn't make the connection between a trash fire in an alley and homelessness.

[ She looks at him for a moment, curiously. It's rare she meets someone who's from a similar circumstance to her, if not exactly. It's rare she can really talk about anything like this. ]

I didn't have a choice but to live in a city. Our world is infested with monsters that can sense negative emotions. Living outside of city barriers is a death sentence for anyone on their own, but especially if you're Grimm bait.

[ Being scared and starving and alone and hurt and angry didn't make Emerald the most attractive company. With most of the outer flames out she looks at her jacket and just tosses it into the barrel. Hers is decidedly not fireproof, so there's no sense in keeping it now. ]

Avoiding cops and stealing were my bread and butter though. [ She lets out a bitter puff of a laugh. ] I liked going for jewelry or things I could fence. That way the people with the food didn't have a reason to call the cops on me.

Edited 2020-06-11 18:10 (UTC)

[The situation Lio had found himself in had been all too common in his world, though he was always unhappy to hear that similar problems had plagued people of other worlds as well. He leaned against the stone of one of the buildings, folding his arms across his chest.]

We burnish were the ones seen as the monsters. I know a great deal that tried to hide what they were after they awakened, go about their normal lives keeping their powers a secret, but one way or another they were always caught.

Our bodies would run internal temperatures over 500 degrees Farenheit, so any simple heat tracking equipment would out us... Not to mention the urge to burn would sometimes overwhelm people to the point of resulting in literal explosions. It just wasn't option for us to hide in plain sight.

[He fiddled with the earring on his left ear as memories flooded his mind.]

So... I can't say I have any experience in fencing, for that reason. Most of the time we could only steal necessities - food, clothing, equipment, vehicles. Things we could take back to our camps. There were a lot of years where I did it alone. Well, alone except for my 'spooky kid ghosts'.

In other words, people suck and hate anything different or powerful no matter what planet you're on.

[ Emerald doesn't really seem bothered by him. The one person she believes loves her back home is turning into a literal monster and everything she knew about the world was a lie, worrying about if someone was part fireball part horror movie just sounds tiring. ]

I can make a person see and hear anything I want, but only one or two people at a time.

[ There's not much point in hiding it anymore. She's been outed to her enemies, and she's promised not to be a criminal anymore. It seems pointless now, but she isn't the type to back out of her word easily. ]

It's a lot easier to steal a little small thing worth a lot that way as long as a store isn't busy [ because she can't do more than that without seriously hurting herself-- two people is asking for a migraine as is ] but I also didn't have anyone else to steal for.

Sure seems that way.

[Lio furrowed a brow at her curiously when she admitted the existence of her powers, almost not sure what to make of them. Making a person hallucinate seemed like a... well, useful skill. Maybe not even something that necessarily had solely malicious applications, either.]

... I'm almost curious to experience that myself - not that I'd ask you to spend the Chroma just to sate my curiosity. But being able to convey something to someone just using your mind... I'm sure a lot of artists would kill for that kind of power. Was it something you were born with?

If I did it, it'd just look normal to you. I can't do anything that I can't imagine myself though, so if you want to see someone you have to show me a video or something. I don't mind spending chroma, I have lots.

[ She had two boyfriends until recently and gets chroma out of consensual fighting with people on top of that. She doesn't sleep alone. She's not balling like some of the super rich people here, but she's never super worried about using her semblance or aura. At least with just one person.

She's pretty sure she'd die if she tried to use 9 with chroma involved or something. It's not that she can't, after all, it's just... dangerous without chroma involved. One mind connecting to multiple minds doesn't go very well. ]

Uh.. [ How does she answer that? She never actually went to school, and she doesn't think there's really a known answer anyway. But she has thoughts. So she just starts with the base explanation. ]

In my world, people adapted to be capable of bearing our souls forward as an aura. Aura can be used as a shield or to add force into a weapon or an attack, and anyone who's activated their aura has a unique ability called a semblance. It's not super well-researched I think and like.. most of what's publicly known is a complete lie anyway, but my theory is that we're born with the capability, but as you grow up it becomes whatever defense mechanism you need to survive impending trauma.

[ She shrugs. ] That's the only way I think it makes sense anyway.. like, mine I needed to be able to hide and steal and create distractions because there was no one else to help me- so I could make people and things up. Someone else I know got struck my lightning and now she can absorb electricity and convert it to strength. I saw another person watch his friend run through with a spear and he could suddenly heal her.

[ Well, she doesn't know what the exact details of that one are. It wasn't healing exactly, but that's what it looked like to her. ] There's no proof, but that's what I think.

I'd be more interested in seeing things you'd want to show me - things like your own world or experiences, or the people you care about.

[Lio listened, as she explained. He'd said more than enough about himself and his own world, he absolutely didn't mind hearing about hers in return. If anything, hearing about other worlds so insanely different from his own fascinated him. He thought he would have stopped being so surprised by now, but it seemed like people never failed to impress him with their stories.]

That's amazing. I awoke to my abilities, too - we burnish weren't born being able to synchronize with the Promare, even though it was labeled a mutation for a really long time. It's just that some humans were more susceptible to it at differing points in their lives. For me, I awoke when I was a child. For many others, they were adults with completely normal lives before they awoke.

I don't know if there was any rhyme or reason to it... the research was kept hidden by the government, and the one researcher that had done the most work on our behalf was murdered. So I'm no stranger to having to figure this stuff out through anecdotes.

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