riverviewlogs | Chandra Catch-All

Entry tags:

Chandra Catch-All

who: Chandra and YOU
what: Catch-All for April
when: Throughout April
where: All Sorts of Places
warnings: Um? Fire warning?

Note: If you want a specific prompt, or to spitball ideas, you can either cash me on plurk (Rakath) or PM this journal. Or just throw something at me. I'm easy!

01. Communal Housing Building

So there are these things, called stairs? Chandra doesn't see the point of them. Cause she figured out the balconies are just the right height to climb. Okay, sure, she's cheating and using magic to help her get the height she needs. But the point is she hasn't climbed anything since she was on Kaladesh. And that was a while ago.

So for anyone staying on any floor, yes even up to floor ten, there's a weird redhead climbing up the balcony side and onto your landing. Maybe stoping to catch her breath. View the city from up here. Wow, what a view. Talk to this lunatic?

02. The Abandoned City

Chandra is not an artisan, or an artist, her only creative skill is... well, she's very good at burning things down. Which might make her an odd choice for someone charged with exploring the woods and mapping new areas. But, she is, and she's got a system.

Chandra is perched on the side of a building looking out of the outer wall. She's got a larg wooden board, with hinges built in so it can collapsed to something a bit smaller. She's using her magic to burn paths and details into the board, adding details to the map she can see from within the wall, and remember from when she was out there.

Burning details and routes and... places she set fires, into the wood to make a map. Of course, this map wasn't very portable, but she took it to the people that added her survey to the other surveys to make better maps. Although they got a bit mad how often her maps included fires.

03. Outside the Wall - Waterfall

"SWEET!" Chandra found a clearing with a huge waterfall, a pool, and some stones. It didn't have a long stream to float down, but it was a bit of water she could laze in. And, well, Chandra's work ethic is dubious at best.

She did make sure the pool was sea monster free, danced the perimeter looking for monsters, then she came back to the pool. She shedded her gauntlet, plate, and then her chainmail. Down to the tunic and wraps she wore under her armor and splashed into the water happily, like a child on vacation. Laying on her back floating in the water. "This plane isn't too bad."

04. Outside the Wall - Tall Grass

The weather had taken a turn for the rainy, but that hardly bothered Chandra. Rain was fine, she hadn't set fire to it... but oh man she wanted to try. No, no, later, for now she was exploring and making some marks on her map.

Yes, yes she wrote her maps in burnt wood. But if you think rain is enough to douse her you're totally wrong. She was wandering around, pushing grass and brances out of her way when she heard something.

"Char"

Hmm. Chandra stops and listens, she found a little lizard... thing, orange and its tail had a tiny little flame on it. Trying to keep itself out of the rain in a little hollowed out stump. "Hey..."

"Charmander"

The thing was trying to keep its tail lit. Well, isn't that something. It was trying to press back into the back away from her. Chandra lit her hair on fire to try and make nice. Wild Charmander is confused. "Okay, let's try again, do you need to get out of here?"

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Wikus likes to relax a little when he's on his assigned floor. You can't exactly hide your hideous mutant body for long from people you share a shower room with, so he's learned to not be so self-conscious of his half-alien body around his roommates.

As a result, he's chilling on the balcony with only a t-shirt to cover up the fact that his left arm and shoulder are encased in green exoskeleton up to the side of his neck. Nothing hides his mismatched eyes, half-bald head, or the further patches of shell growing out of his temples.

He's kind of a mess and not expecting company. He's certainly not expecting company in the form of a woman vaulting over the eighth floor balcony railing.

"What the fok?!" Reeling back from his place leaning against the railing, Wikus manages to gracefully land on his ass.

"Uh, hi!" Chandra realized somewhere on her climb maybe people living on these floor wouldn't be okay with this. However... she really wanted to climb, so clearly this would be okay. And really it isn't that high a fall, she's had to deal with much worse in Ghirapur or on Zendikar.

It was after she caught her breath, and took a look at him she noticed he wasn't quite human. There was a lot going on there. It was kinda like what Emrakul did to Innistrad. No, no he didn't look crazy. Maybe more like those Simic Guild members in Ravnica? They did stuff like, well, this. It didn't really seem that important, not right now. "Oh, right, I'm Chandra."

Chandra wasn't in her armor, just some local clothes... and her gauntlet. A long metal piece on her right arm. A very intricate bit of enchanted armor to help with her fire. Barring the bright orange eyes, she seemed completely human, how often do inhuman things have so many freckles?

Wikus's mouth flaps silently, doing a good impression of a fish out of water. Chandra may be greeting him, but his mind is still several steps behind, dealing with her sudden appearance.

"You're on my balcony!" he forces out. A truly astute observation. Shaking his head, he manages to say something slightly more intelligence. "How the fok did you get up here, we're eight bloody storeys off the ground!"

Seriously, he'd just been gazing moodily down at the city. It's a pretty big drop!

"Well, there's a handhold that's pretty easy to get from the balcony below, and then it's just a matter of climbing up. I did a lot of this at home." Chandra just climbs, she didn't really think about it, "And I was going to keep going up, this building is huge!"

Chandra that doesn't make it better...

Climbing back to his feet, Wikus returns to the rail and leans over, looking down. Nope, still looks like a completely impossible climb to him. And a good way to make yourself a sidewalk pancake with one wrong move.

"You're fokken kidding me."

"I don't have a flight pack, and even with some extra help I can only jump to about the fifth floor. And if I did that there'd be scorch marks all over the ground down there." How is it so hard to believe, she's up there on the balcony. That happened so it has to be the case right?

"I grew up climbing things, my home town was full of tall buildings with intricate filigree and safety rails to climb." Plus watching catmonkeys climb walls was just too fun not to try!

"You- only the fifth- what-" Wikus stops and takes a deep breath. He's floormates with a cyborg ninja and some sort of smokey zombie man, he's on a moon in another universe, not to mention he's turning into an alien. He should really stop expecting things to make sense and just go with the flow.

"Well, as long as you're just going up and not some sort of extreme peeping tom..."

"I can't really fly, but I can make small explosions and that's usually enough to throw me far enough up a building, or over a canyon." Chandra's real casual talking about this, like being able to make small explosions is normal. Then again she's talking to someone with alien bits and she's not too bothered by that. "I'm a pyromancer, fire magic. Climbing a building is nothing."

She smiles, "Not sure who Tom is, but I don't really care what other people do. I just do my own thing."

"You just... Toss yourself around. With explosions!?" That had to be legitimately the least safe method of travel he has ever heard of in his life.

"Christ, how are you still alive- No, don't answer that." She mentioned magic. Wikus is pretty sure any sort of logic goes out the window when someone mentions magic. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Fokken magic, man"

Magic isn't supposed to exist, what is his life.

"Well, only when the other option is worse?" You only do that when you have a very good reason to do it. She isn't insane. She just knows that sometimes you need to jump really high to escape an enemy.

Although the air around Chandra was decidedly warmer than it was when she climbed up, this guy is very angry and it's kinda rubbing Chandra the wrong way, "Hey! I haven't said a thing about your weird inhuman bits, don't get all angry about my magic."

Chandra wasn't on fire... yet.

Wikus's widen when Chandra mentions his 'weird inhuman bits' then looks offended at her for bringing it up. Backing away from the railing, he crossed his arms and hunches up.

"Hey, I wasn't talking about your magic, I was talking about all magic. It's not supposed to fokken exist, man." Yes. That definitely sounds less insulting towards Chandra's magic.

He adds a petulant, "And if you didn't want to see people when they're not publicly presentable then you shouldn't be creeping around their balconies."

There's a definite light in Chandra's eyes, a glow of magic. Oh, the railing is starting to glow from the heat she's pressing into it with her hand. "That's the sorta thinking that had me nearly executed. 'Magic's not suppose to exist.'"

"I don't care, you be whatever you are, don't tell me I'm not suppose to exist."

"Whoa, whoa, hey!" Backing further away, he shoots furtive glances at the patio doors, wondering if he should just cut and run.

Lifting his hands in a hopefully placating gesture he tries to clarify. "Look, I'm not- I'm not passing moral judgments here, man! I don't mean that it shouldn't exist, as in people should get rid of it, I'm just saying-" Deep breath, Wikus.

"Look, where I'm from, magic isn't real. It's just- just made-up stories, man! So it's really fokken weird to me that it does exist here.

"I don't- I definitely don't think you should be executed, okay?"

Please don't set him on fire.

"This isn't your plane, you should get used to things being new," this was obviously why only Planeswalkers should planeswalk. The very notion of getting used to new rules seemed so foreign to some folks. Honestly, this shouldn't be so hard.

"You should be more mindful of what you say. I can't be the only one who had the law decide to frame me to make it easier to snuff my fire out. Well, not fire for everyone, just me." She was getting distracted, which helped cool her down as she tried to remember where the point was and what color it was. "I should keep going, the view is probably better from of the higher floors."

"Right, yeah, you got it, man," Wikus says, hands still up in the air, his heart pounding. "Think before I speak. Enjoy, uh, enjoy the rest of your trip."

Please leave the balcony so he can wheeze quietly to himself and deal with the fact that he's still kind of a coward under normal circumstances.

After taking a moment to process just what the heck had happened, Morgan finally poked his head out onto the balcony.

"You know," he said, trying to sound stern and smiling despite himself, "tradition says you should have asked me to let my hair down first. I mean, it's no golden stair, but I'm not growing it out for nothing." He waved the tip of his hair at her with one hand, demonstrating that yeah, it was about as long as his arm.

Chandra raised an eyebrow at that. Because she has no idea about any tradition like that. It sounded kinda dumb, he didn't have the hair for it anyway. And tradition wasn't really her thing. "Right."

So she'll just turn her attention to the skyline, wow the city looks great from up here.

"Tough crowd," Morgan said, not really deterred as he stepped halfway out to lean on the balcony door. "You climbing the building for the sake of exercise?"

"Well, mostly cause I haven't climbed anything lately. But I guess it is good exercise." Chandra never really thinks about that sort of thing, working out, getting buff, all that stuff Gids puts too much focus on. She just does what she likes and it works out for her. "The buildings aren't as interesting to climb as where I grew up, but they still have all the same parts."

"So you just like climbing, and show it by climbing buildings?" Morgan, who obviously did care about working out and looking good to judge by his figure, giggled into a hand and promptly ruined all that general manliness he had going on to him. "I mean this one hundred percent as a compliment, but are you a divine avatar of tomboyishness?"

No, seriously, that was an absolute compliment in his mind.

"Well, there aren't any flying mountains to climb, or volcanoes..." Look Chandra's not used to climbing trees, unless they are made of metal and full of gears. She never spent a lot of time in the grassy Elf districts of Ghiraphur.

"Girly stuff is too... I dunno, fragile. I need work clothes or they'll get destroyed with all the stuff I do." Liliana was the girliest person in Chandra's life. And she kept her clothes so perfect by standing at the back and letting zombies do her dirty work.

Which was actually dirty, cause zombies come out of the ground! Chandra humor.

"Which is what, aside from climbing buildings?" He was only getting more curious as this discussion went on.

"Well, back home I traveled with my friends fighting bad guys. Before that I lived in a monastery. Mostly I just like exploring and finding new things, even if a lot of them try to kill me." Pretty clothes are bad for traveling, they do not survive.

"Oh hey, monastary fistbump." Morgan stuck out a fist for just that purpose. "Actually, that all sounds pretty cool."

Well, at least the name was fairly obvious, so Chandra bumps fists with him.

"It's pretty great. Technically I'm the abbot of the monastery... I should probably go home when I get a chance."

Morgan valiantly suppressed a Costello joke. "I should specify that this was a martial-arts kind of monastery, not a religious one," he said, though that was probably obvious if she'd taken any note of the way he moved. "Name's Morgan Knight, by the way!"

"Um, it was a religion based on fire magic? So there was some martial-arts?" There was a lot of things to learn to control flame. Dance, combat, meditation, Keral Keep realized that conformity was not the way to teach a flame. Flame burned uniquely. Each student needed to find their own way under the guide of the other monks.

"Oh, right! Chandra Nalaar. That's me."

That... sounded really cool, actually.

"Okay, so apologies in advance if this is way too forward, but could I talk you into hitting up a cafe sometime?"

"Everyone tells me I shouldn't have coffee." This is because hyperactive fire mages on caffeine is just a bad idea.

"They have other things at cafes," Morgan pointed out, bemused. "Besides, the point is less what either of us eats or drinks and more that I'm trying to ask you out, so honestly I'm pretty flexible on the one for the sake of the other."

"Well, if they have other things... seems fun!" Chandra, sadly, doesn't really know what being asked out it. That's a parlance she isn't really aware of. Dating isn't really something Chandra has ~~copious~~, ~~a great deal~~, any experience.

Given her reply, Morgan guessed that, and he half-hid a grin beneath a hand as he lifted it to his face. "Hey, I should probably be clear, I'm asking you out on a date."

Full disclosure right from the start. Better to lay everything out, and accepted a potential rejection once things were clear, than to have the lady discover what he meant later and be upset.

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Chandra Catch-All

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