Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Powder Miner]

”Oh. Oh, okay. Um... thank you. Well... here goes, then!” This time, when Shef shot, Faith tried exactly what they had advised — instead of trying the earlier techniques she had, she made a shield and tried to make it so that projectiles had a certain amount of energy absorbed, in this case enough to make the bullets strike harmlessly against the plate, and then be allowed to pass through.

She also tried to make it regenerate naturally from her energy.

[Empiricist]

Faith
The next bullet that goes through decelerates before pinging off the plate. The shield holds for a bit and then it pops. Not entirely sure where it went wrong, you think it happened during your attempts to cut off the power or recharge it. Maybe it didn't fully cut off? Maybe you accidentally overloaded it during the recharge? Hard to tell, you've made some steps though.

[IamanElfCollaborator]

"Alright. Let's see how this goes."
Minato tries to visualise the plate as a Regalia, gripping it tightly, the golden lines forming across it akin to his armor forming or his weapons materialising. It couldn't be that much harder, right? He did this to swords and spears and shields all the time. He just had to think of the plate as Rho Aias; just another Regalia.

Of course, given Minato's powers generally skewed towards summoning Regalia rather than reinforcing it, and his power was amplified by the Gaia Driver anyway, he doesn't quite put as much reinforcement into it as he'd like.

[Empiricist]

Minato
A spread of silvery stakes erupt from Ren's shotgun and ricochet off the plate, there's some surface damage but none managed to pierce it.
"Good job! Let's do this a few more times to make sure you can keep doing it, then we can move on to trying to do it at range, kay?"

[Chevaleresse]

"I think I've got this, yeah." She smiled at Yuki being Yuki. Her modus operandi might be not unlike the antagonist of a slasher film, but most slashers didn't shout at the top of their lungs like that. "Are you ready to give it a shot?"

[IamanElfCollaborator]

"Really? Huh. Alright."
Not that hard after all. Maybe he was cut out for this.

This time, Minato pours quite a bit more power into reinforcing the plate, his mind's eye seeing it as yet another Regalia, another of the countless shields Minato could use, another of the shields his heart was attuned to.

[Strider03]

"Faith, how does your shield feel to you? In your mind, when you shape the energy, does it flow freely and need to be confined, or act static and need to be molded? Don't know if it'll help, but perhaps if it could be made more. . . liquid, it might survive? Rather than buckling with it, letting the shield get punctured, then simply allowing surface tension to pull the hole closed? Might not be relevant, but that's sort of how it feels when my portals close, so maybe it'd help, who knows."

He gave Faith about a minute, then fired again, carefully partitioning out the amount of spirit energy.

[Empiricist]

Minato
Another spray of oversized flechettes slam into your your makeshift shield, ricocheting off again. This time however the surface damage has been reduced.

[IamanElfCollaborator]

"Again?"

[Empiricist]

Minato
"Yup!"
Well, you continue to use reinforcement for a while before you moving onto the next exercise, wherein the board is propped up and fired upon with the reinforcement having to be applied remotely.

[IamanElfCollaborator]

"Alright. How.....do I do this? Like.....do I just....reinforce until I feel it works, or....?"

[Empiricist]

Minato
"Well, those lines appear when you reinforce things right? Just try things out and see if you get get them to appear, if not we'll work from there."

[Powder Miner]

Faith’s lip raised in a frustrated snarl. ”God, this is a real <pain in the ass!> My shield, I guess, it kind of just, is? I was trying to make it all physical but thta didn’t really seem to do anything. See, um, I’m pretty sure my magic comes directly from my emotions, and therefore comes from me, so it kind of just works with me. I can’t describe it as moving or so much, just as... a presence. Extended I guess. Back in the fight where... the... the last mansion fight. Ugh. Um. Sorry, um, what I was going to say was, when I had that <fucker> marked, I could feel it. I knew it was there. It wasn’t, like, an object, a tangible thing, like, but I knew it was there, connected to me.”

Faith paused, and looked down, a finger put horizontally across her lips as she thought. ”...hum. Maybe you’re right and I’ve been doing this wrong.”

Faith sighed and then put up the shield again. This time she didn’t try thinking of a physical object or specifically meting amounts of resistance in specific places, or of a battery. This time, Faith just tried to channel the feeling that had been overwhelming ever since she got her new regalia and beat the bitch with the scythe away from her boyfriend: the feeling of being hit again and again and again, and not stopping the hits, accepting that maybe she would never be able to fully stop herself from getting hurt over and over. The feeling that despite that, she had to carry on. Faith tried to channel the thing that had kept her going now, the thing that motivated her to keep going in the shithole that was the Awakened world: the realization that if she would always keep getting hit, then there was nothing that she could do but keep getting up and keep going anyway. That lying down and curling up wasn’t going to stop the Awakened world from fucking her up, so she would have to just live with it and fuck it up a bit back.

Into this altered shield, Faith tried to channel Perseverance.

...also she visibly teared up a bit, though her face was suddenly quite set.

[Empiricist]

Faith
Your fears, your resolve, your hopes, and your insecurities, they twist and boil within you, as you sink deeper and deeper into the conflicting turmoil of your own emotions. For a moment, they're the only thing there is, as if it were your world, as it that is all that surrounds you, and as you blink away the tears from your eyes, you see that it is because that is precisely what is happening now. A radiant golden aura surrounds you, a paroxystic barrier born of your resolve, burning bright, oh so bright, but only for a moment. Only for that brief moment.

Did you think it would be that easy?

Before your eyes it flickers and fails, like the last dying embers of some distant sunset. You try to kindle it, by God do you try, fanning your emotions into a frenzy, focusing on the exact feelings that gave rise to it, yet even that slips from your fingertips. Passions are such insubstantial fleeting things, so capricious, so quick to change, so easy to forget. They feel so real in the moment, yet when it all passes, when rationality resumes they can seem so distant. Distant, yes, it feels distant already doesn't it? That spark, that moment where you thought you had it all figured out, only to be snuffed out. And yet, you continue, and yet you preserve, like a damned fool. Even as the warm fades, even as the light dims, you preserve, you hold on, because that is all you can do, all anyone can do.

The failing, thinning shield begins to crack, like a glass globe being crushed by the abyssal depths of the ocean, and along those cracks, a deep purple light begins to shine.

What do you do?

[Powder Miner]

When Faith blinked back the tears from her eyes, she realized that she hadn’t actually quite done so and now they were sliding down her face. Oops. Oh man. That was going to be hard to explain to Shef. Actually maybe she should, like, suddenly switch partners for a bit, and not show her face around him for a little while?

But she opened her eyes, and in that moment she was transfixed. It was... beautiful, actually. Bright, of course, beautiful, and golden, but not bright in the blinding way that her Lucky Sunbeams were. This was... an inspiring kind of brightness, maybe. It wasn’t soft, but it wasn’t hostile, either. Faith was hit by the startling realization that this was how she’d tried to present herself when she came to Japan. She wanted to be the boisterous confident American stereotype she’d... well, to be bluntly honest with herself, that she’d seen in so much anime.

That hadn’t fucking lasted, though, not at all. Like that moment of brightness wasn’t lasting, either. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, that was a horribly fitting timing of this stuff fucking up, and her negative emotion energy was shining through fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

She took a breath to calm herself down. Okay, she just had to not give up, right? Maybe she wasn’t going to be miss American Anime Character any time soon, but that didn’t mean she was useless. She’d saved Sakurako, twice, she’d saved the guy she, well, really did care for, or at least she’d helped him avoid a lot of pain. That was worth something, right? Even if she probably wasn’t going to stop being a constant emotional disaster any time soon, she could still help people. She just had to keep that in mind and move towards her.

...she also wanted to shout something along the lines of “Oh my God, I am so tired of this bullshit, can this thing finally work already, I’ve tried like fifty different things by now god DAMN!” and stomp her foot into the ground and throw a fit, but, hey, maybe she could combine the two a little.

Faith stomped her foot against the ground, but rather than throw a fit, her mouth quirked downwards into a half-frown of concentration. She, rather than try and just cling onto the shield, moved her will to push back against the feelings that were pressing down against her shield. She really was getting annoyed, but she was also learning to do something about it when she felt awful, or when random things happened, instead of just... not.