Outside of New York, closer to Westchester proper, a circus set up shop 10 months prior and shows no sign of leaving. That's all well and good. People like the circus. And near that circus is the beginning of a large forested area. Something about the place set Amanda off from the beginning, and she long ago put up alarm wards - just a simple spell to warn her should something magical cross the boundary. So far so good, Amanda and her friends and coworkes were able to continue on unhindered.
Skip ahead several months.
The day /after/ Amanda reapplied her wards, stengthening the weakening arcane energies, something happened. Because of course it would have to. Confronting the.. whatever it was, Amanda found herself face to face with a shifting mass, mud and plantlife and rock and bone and goodness knows what else. Knives, blades embedded in the ground, form a 200 foot wide semi circle against the edge of the forest, a last ditch attempt to keep the.. thing.. within the forest's boundaries. And of course, Amanda is within the barrier with it, desperately teleporting out of the way of angry fists and gurgled, wet shouts.
It just so happens — as it so often does, uncannily enough — that Sophie is on her way back to the school right about then, flying invisibly by not /directly/ overhead, but close enough to notice something not-right going on down there. Alarmed, the airy mutant alters her course, swooping rapidly down toward the confrontation.
And so it is, that a few seconds later, a maybe-familiar voice speaks from the air just above and to the right of Ms. Sefton, the words coming quickly. "Amanda, right? Dani's girlfriend? It's me, Sophie — we met that day at that pizza place. Don't worry you can't see me right now, hopefully it can't, either. What are we dealing with, here?"
Danielle does not have any super magical sense of danger, no otherworldly connection to 'weird stuff'. However, she is very sensitive to animals. And there's a vibe of agitation and distress from the lovely beasties in the circus. The closer she gets, returning from a shopping jaunt, the more palpable that agitation becomes. Unease melts into worry, worry stiffens into concern. Concern pushes stroll into trot, and she jogs towards the wagons. She calls to one of the workers if Amanda's been seen lately, and barely waits for an answer as she works her way deeper.
She starts to turn towards the stables to soothe the nervous horses, but stops to listen instead. With a grunt, she chucks her shopping bag to lurk safely among some hay, then breaks into a proper run towards the forest, where gross gloopy sounds are emerging. "Amanda? You okay?"
She teleports twice between those words, ending up behind the shifting mass. "Hi, yes!" She doesn't mean to sound like she's snapping, but well. This isn't exactly her idea of a fun time. It's the second time, really, that she's been in combat of some kind. "Definitely not okay!" A huge vine erupts from the thing's back and swats at Amanda, who rolls to the side. A second or two too fast for her to cast the teleport spell. Drat. "I have no idea," she finally manages to spit out. Some mass of earth angry and wanting to hit things."
"So, hit it. Got it," comes the voice from the air. And immediately afterward, there's a rippling trail through the air, accompanied by a rather singular tearing sound as a small volume of air is compressed to near-solidity while streaking through the surrounding atmosphere at nearly the speed of sound. Assuming the bolt lands, it will strike the creature with an impact comparable to a full-on haymaker from someone on a par with Captain America or other peak humans.
Danielle dashes to Amanda's side, crouching to offer a hand up, and to position herself protectively between her girlfriend and the … uh… "Well, that's disgusting, whatever it is," she observes. Right about then, a 'woosh' zips out of nowhere to punch at the blobbything. She frowns faintly and glances at Amanda, who doesn't appear to be spellcasting, then peers up towards where the 'woosh' seems to have come from. "Friend of yours, I hope. Well… let's see if it's got a mind in there somewhere." Her gaze narrows intently at the creature, and she works hard to see if there's anything for her mutant power to latch onto. It's hard to imagine what might scare the pants off a gloopy monster, but she gives it her best shot.
"Yeah, Sophie," Amanda says. "Sounded like her, anyhow." Amanda happily accepts the hand, and the distraction Sophie offers, inadvertantly or not. "Dunno what that is. Tried to seal it in the forest, but it sort of beat me to the edge." She leans on Dani for a moment, grabbing the woman and teleporting quickly across the semi-circle, grabbing the daggers that created the temporary barrier. "Better take it down before the backlash from it shattering takes me down," she explains to Dani. Of course, the monstrosity is too distracted to even notice the absence of the greenish barrier that was preventing it from moving further from the forest. Surprisingly (or not?) there doesn't seem to be a mind. At least, nothing that Dani's powers recognize as such.
*SHRACK!* Another of Sophie's air bolts slams into the monster, since the first attempt at least seemed to distract it from its pursuit of Amanda, however much actual damage it may or may not have done. Her voice again sounds from a vague point in the air — "Dani! Hi! Open to suggestions on dealing with this thing!"
"Ho, Soph!" Dani calls out, glad for the other mutant's unexpected presence. "Promise I woulda figured out it was you sooner or later." She gives her head a little shake as her powers fail to latch on, and she tries to think quickly. "It's mindless, so probably some kind of hunger or instinct driving it… Maybe we can turn it and lead it off somewhere less bothersome. Orrr…" Battering it into lifeless goop doesn't seem to be making much progress. "… think there might be something inside it? Some kinda artifact holding it together?"
Indeed, Dani seems to be right. There's no real /malice/ to the creature's movements or attempts to swat at Sophie (too easy to dodge those from the air). It could be hungry.
"Well.. I could try to cast something to hold it open, if one of you wants to take a peek!" She teleports with Dani again, this time having more than enough time to dodge the rush of roots headed their way. "Someone's going to have to keep that thing off me while I cast it, though. Won't be able to keep casting if he decides to get a little too friendly!"
In her airy form, Sophie is at least unconcerned with the creature's vain attempts to smack at the invisible source of the airy hammer-blows it's been subjected to. "I can try to hold it back. I can only keep this going for a half-minute or so, though." And with that, the elementalist mutant switches tactics, and instead of loosing another bolt at the monster, a focused hurricane-force blast of wind starts to pummel it, angled downward and away from Amanda and Dani, aimed at pinning the thing in place, or at the very least, severely impeding its ability to move toward toward the other two young women.
"Sophie, hold it as best you can. Amanda, you do your thing. I'll keep it back if it slips out of Sophie's grip," Danielle decides, scooping up a large stick from the ground as she gives Amanda some breathing room. She also positions herself in a braced-and-ready position directly between the creature and her girlfriend, the stick clutched comfortably like a spear. "If you can get it open a bit, I'll see what I can knock loose."
Amanda Sefton hands Dani the knives she retrieved. "Just in case," she says. Dani's good, but the stick is still a stick, after all.
Amanda casting magic isn't exactly something she's flaunted. Not even in front of Dani. Oh sure, she's tossed a few simple spells, once or twice, to drive off some jerks who didn't like that Dani is Native. But that's nothing, really. Parlour tricks, as her mother might say. She retreats from Dani, putting distance between herself and her girlfriend. Her stance is more relaxed. She murmurs words that definitely aren't English and moves her hands in patterns that make sense to only her. Rings of arcane energy, brilliant green as the barrier before was, appear around her hands. She gestures again and the rings vanish, only to reappear as vaguely hand-shaped manifestations that tear at the monstrosity, trying to force the belly of the thing apart.
All the while it struggles, swatting at the invisible Sophie, vines and roots lashing out at anything around it. And when, through great pains - keeping those hands manifested is making Amanda sweat and bite her lip, her knees almost looking ready to buckle - the thing's belly tears open, revealing some sort of pulsating rock.
Sophie looks on in fascination as Amanda's magic does its work, then — though no one can see it — grins as the spell has its intended effect. "That looks like something. Dropping my winds so you can take a shot at it on three, Dani!" Since, well, a small hurricane pounding toward the ground at a 45-degree angle might make throwing something at the thing a bit extra-challenging. "One… Two… Three!" And on that count, the winds cease, hopefully giving Dani a window to attack before the creature can start moving again.
Fierce though her mighty stick might be, Dani does feel better with the knives in hand. The stick waits in reserve, just in case, while Dani flips one dagger end over end, catching the hilt each time, waiting for her chance. She smiles with pride as her girlfriend's magic rips the monster open, and grunts softly as Sophie begins to count. On 'three', the Cheyenne valkyrie takes one step, snaps her right arm back, then swings it forward in a clean arc, hurling one of the daggers in a quick spin towards that weird throbbing rock. In the same motion, she takes another step and repeats the process with the blade in her left hand. Just in case the first one misses, the second one is insurance. "Hyaa!"
Without the protection of rock and bone, mud and moss and vine, the rock is an easy target. Both of the knives hit their mark and enough force comes from both hits that the rock tumbles out of the makeshift body. The darn thing is fragile too, because once it hits the ground, it cracks open… and the dark blue light it was glowing with blazes brilliantly briefly and then dies down. The body of the thing, wracked by magic and hurricane force winds, shudders, and then just… /glorps/ into a mess of stuff on the ground. Stuff. The scientific term for it, clearly.
Sophie hovers in place for a good ten seconds, watching to see if the thing is going to start moving again. When it doesn't, she first shimmers into ghostly visibility, her body still made of air, but no longer colorlessly blending in, then, as she's alighting on the ground near the other two young heroines, a swirl of mist engulfs her, clearing to reveal her in solid, human form once more. She's not in costume, instead dressed in a casually-attractive skirt and blouse outfit. She's smiling brightly as she declares, "Well, that's that!" A moment later, she asks, curiously, "Any idea what that thing was?"
Danielle holds her ground, fists clenched as she watches the creature shudder and glorp apart. She keeps her own eye on it for a long while, only gradually relaxing. "I'm no expert, but it wasn't .. alive. Not in any sense we're used to, at least." She slaps her hands together, then turns, flashes a grin at Sophie, and hurries back over to Amanda. "Easy, honey," she soothes gently as she moves to make sure her exhausted girlfriend doesn't faceplant on the ground. "You were brilliant. So were you, Soph. Not sure we could've handled that if you hadn't been here."
Amanda Sefton manages to stay standing, but when Dani is at her side, she leans heavily into the woman. She wipes her brow with a hand. It could be nerves - second 'real fight' sort of deal. Or maybe she's not as good at magic as she pretends. Or that was just really that difficult. "I don't know. Looked like someone tried to summon up an elemental and botched the job pretty badly," she says, frowning. "Strange did say there was something out here…" He also said she should hit up that arcane bookstore to borrow a book on the topic.
"That's more in your line than mine, obviously," Sophie replies to Amanda, nodding, before turning to Dani, grinning as she says, "Teamwork! Just like we were taught. Teamwork and improvisation."
Danielle snorts at Sophie, but her grin returns. "Don't forget the lesson about 'don't get eaten by weird monsters'. It's also easier when we aren't getting graded," Her arm hugs around Amanda's hips, keeping the other woman more or less on her feet, while providing solid support. "And we're lucky this thing tried to gnaw through this direction, and didn't get into someplace with more people. But I'll be very happy if the next thing I fight will stay still and let me stab it a few dozen times." She tilts her head lightly to peck a quick kiss to Amanda's temple, and mentions, "Sit down for a minute. I'll go find those knives, mm?" They're usually pretty discreet, rarely showing affection in front of others. But Sophie knows already, so it's all groovy.
She nods, if reluctantly. Slowly, Amanda sits, crossing her legs. "I could go for a nap, and a drink, and food," she mentions absently, as Dani retrieves the knives. Her head glances from Dani to Sophie. "I could /probably/ manage a teleport for the three of us back home, and we could get a snack or something." She did invite Sophie to come around some time, after all. "Sound good?" She's trying hard to make it look like she's not tired. She's not very good at that.
Danielle takes only a few moments to fetch the knives, then hurries back to the other two. "Alright, one last teleport, but you're gonna rest after that. Sophie and me will take care of snacks and stuff." Yeah, no, she's not buying the 'not tired' act. And as soon as Amanda teleports them 'home', into the comfortably cozy wagon that she and Dani live in, the Cheyenne bustles Amanda right over to the bed in the back, and as promised, handles the refreshments on her own. While Amanda recovers, the two mutants have the chance to chitchat and catch up.