shatterverse | (no subject)

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Leah could, if she wanted, call up any number of people and ask them to do her a favour by giving her a lift to the farm.

She chooses to take a cab because that's one step closer to independence, and she's weird like that.

Which is why, one afternoon, said cab pulls up alongside the farm and deposits a blonde woman in sunglasses and carrying a white cane, who tips generously before it heads off. She takes a few seconds to orient herself before heading up the path towards the farmhouse.

She's hoping to find a person in particular, but anyone who gets in her way will be spoken to.

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Val is sitting by the pond, arm-wrestling with Spots. This is an activity that involves a lot of splashing and a lot of tentacles. The sound of her laugh might or might not be familiar; she's only spoken to Leah just the once, after all.

And Leah's not got Babs' memory. Still, there's laughter, and she's addicted to laughter. Careful as she ventures off path onto icy mud, she follows the noise.

"Whatever you're doing sounds amazing."

"Looking after my brother's kraken. Spots, say hi."

Spots says: "burblebrblub Hi! blublublrbl"

"Oh good," says Leah, with a bemused smirk. "There's a Kraken. Hi, Spots."

She stops couple of metres away - not out of rudeness or anything, but because she's pretty sure there's a lake or pond she could accidentally fall into nearby, and she's not planning on tempting fate.

Spots waves, sprinkling everyone with droplets of cold salt water. Val laughs.

"Guess you're new around here, huh?"

Because you can only walk past the salt pond so many times without meeting, or at least glimpsing, the kraken.

"Well, I live in Metropolis," Leah says, waving vaguely in that direction with the hand that's not holding her cane in front of her. "I don't visit that often, though.

"I'm Leah."

"Yeah? Val. Good to meet you."

Thoughtfully, Leah hazards, "with the shiny tentacles?"

"--Yeah. What, do I know you from somewhere?"

Normally people don't have to ask about the shiny tentacles when they're already on display. This is the point where Val notices that Leah is blind.

"I'm friends with Rach and Babs," Leah offers. "Actually, I'm kind of here to talk business with you, if you've got the time?"

"Yeah, sure," she says absently, retracting most of her tentacles and patting Spots on the head with a splash.

...'Rach and Babs'? A few things click.

"Hang on. Innovator?" She laughs. "Oh, man, don't tell me. Rachel's got you in on the flesh city gig?"

"Guilty as charged!" Leah says with a quick laugh. "To both, actually. You don't mind?"

"Nah, saves me figuring out how to work Stevie's radio again. I was gonna ask you myself. So what's up?"

"Just need to know who we've got and what their powers are," Leah explains. "I'm gonna be coordinating from a long way back."

"Well, from the farm there's me, Luce, and Neil that I know about. And whatserface, the chick with the whip, Sonia. I can introduce you to Neil if you want. He ain't got powers, but he's got a great big fucking robot that mostly works and you can probably get him to tell you all about it. Dunno about Sonia, but she's probably around here somewhere."

She forgets to say anything further about Lucy.

That's OK, Leah knows about Lucy from Rachel.

"I'll pin Sonia and Neil down," she says out loud, as if adding them to a mental list.

"So tell me how your shiny works. What can you do with it?"

"Uhhh, fuck." Val uses profanity like some people use 'um'.

"Whatever I want, as long as whatever I make stays attached to me. If I'm doing something new I have to think about it or it goes poof, but old news like wings or easy shit like tentacles I can keep going even when I'm not paying much attention."

"Can I have a feel?" Leah asks, holding out her hand. "Can you change textures?"

"—Yeah, sure."

Val flicks out a tentacle and rests the end of it in Leah's hand. It starts out light and soft, almost squishy, like a living feather pillow. The surface is smooth, neither sticky nor slippery.

"I dunno about texture, but I can do like, weight and density and shit."

The tentacle-end rolls up into a little ball and grows heavier, more rigid, until it's more like iron than goosedown.

"Fucking ay."

Leah, also, swears like a sailor. She also has arm muscles at the crazy end of the baseline human spectrum, so when they tense under the weight, it means something.

"How much have you got to work with?"

"How much? As much as I can think about all at the same time, I guess."

She lets the tentacle lighten again, ending up with something resembling a very smooth baseball on the end of a very smooth rope.

"I can make really big wings and a fuckton of tentacles, but if I've gotta do all that and pick a lock, I'm gonna forget about something and it'll go poof, like I said."

"Gotcha," Leah says, with a quick nod.

"D'you like blades?"

"I learned how to do swords a while back," she offers. "Like, make 'em, I mean. Still working on the 'use 'em' part."

Which isn't the best news, but it's not bad.

"What worked against the last lot you went up against? Rach said they weren't fans of sharp."

"I hit 'em, stabbed 'em, picked 'em up and smashed 'em into things, whatever. Don't remember if one of those worked particularly better'n the rest. Oh, uh, I think I threw one off a tower, too. That worked like a fucking charm."

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