lostcarnival | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Who: Scout and OPEN
What: Adjusting to new feet using the power of Athleticism
When: After the Game Cube, for the next few days
Where: Anywhere really? Most notably the Backyard, the woods, the lake, and one of the tents.
Warnings: Nah

Considering the things Scout could have kept from her Game-form, tusk-cat feet aren't too bad. She's still pretty aggravated though. It's literally having to walk on the tips of her toes! She can with an effort put weight on what used to be the balls of her feet - she has to get those coarse pads touching the ground in order to traverse really smooth surfaces - but she can only keep it up for so long. Her feet themselves, or tarsi or whatever now, are elongated. Scout's not keeping her knees and ankles bent in the light crouch that becomes natural to most people who end up with digigrade or ungulate feet, so this makes her noticeably taller.

She has to readjust to standing and walking and pretty much everything, which is a very broad concept. Still, it has to be done. No matter how many times she falls over, or how concerned Thranta seems.

So Scout can be seen for the next few days with a determined expression, walking with a wobble at first. When out of the way, around the less populated trailers, she may be seen side-stepping tens of times in a row, stepping up and down from a block from every angle, hopping and stamping and kicking out and balancing on one leg, performing squat thrusts, and running. She swims in the lake and sharpens her bronze dewclaws and tackles trees. She climbs things. She does strange things with gravity. She can be seen in the woods running along a thin fallen log and jumping from wooden ring to wooden ring. Finally, she spends a lot of time in one of the tents with music of all kinds playing, because she was a really good dancer before and refuses to just lose that.

Over that time she goes from falling or nearly falling every few minutes to... not. Still, even by the end,
it's not unheard of if you startle her.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Axel's not here to make fun. His own hooves were hard to adjust to, he gets it. Scout's got it somewhat easier, but it's still a hard time.

Of course, that doesn't mean he doesn't announce his presence with a little chuckle when she falls. When a Scout falls in the forest, someone's usually around to hear it.

"You're not bending your knees and... What were your ankles enough."

Scout gets back up. She's had plenty of practice in figuring out how, by now; it was sad at first. Now she brushes off some pine needles and straightens up, trying to ignore the heat in her cheeks. She hates people seeing her failing at something.

"I don't need to. I've seen animals with legs like these. They keep them straight."

"Try spreading 'em a little, then. You want to get your center of gravity lower when you're learning how to really move again."

He demonstrates this by crouching slightly. She's seen him really get moving before, likely knows how fast he is, but he's still tempted to show off a little...

"Once you figure your balance out better you can stand more upright and do all kinds of things!"

He decides to demostrate by taking off at a swift trot and making a short (for him) leap - only about 8 feet. Gazelle legs are great.

"Um. Okay." She wants to say she already knows this, but she knows it's just a defensive snap and keeps it to herself. People here know all about trying to adjust to changes, it's what you have to do and she's so not the first or the last.

It's easy to think these things. Harder to convince herself. Scout watches Axel spring up into the air with a bit of envy. Many Jedi are able to make immense leaps with unaugmented human legs, calling on the Force. Not her.

"I guess it's just been a while. My tail was trouble in totally different ways." Like dragging. It seems less outrageously long, now.

"Tails are a pain, but I think the balance issues with legs are worse." He looks her up and down, his own tail flicking. "How fast are the creatures that have those legs? You can probably approach those speeds if your hips have changed at all." Sorry, Scout, but he ain't staring at your hips.

Just as well. "They haven't. My knees, barely. It starts getting different about halfway down my thigh. ...well, my stride's longer, anyway, that'll make me faster once I'm more used to it. Tusk cats have this bounding gait that's kind of hard to do on two legs anyway." Scout shrugs. Better to try to be philosophical about changes.

"That's a start. I'm up to my waist, as... I guess you've seen." Thinking about that is awkward, so he changes the subject. "What else are you trying? Just hopping, or are you doing other things too?"

She smiles seeing him uncomfortable, but goes with the subject change readily enough. "Whatever I can think of. Walking, running, dancing. Climbing things - I've really got to go and sharpen these dewclaws so they can bite into stuff."

Scout is thorough, and wants to build up how these legs and feet work into her muscle memory. The only way is through repetition.

"You dance? Gonna be doing that in the big top if the RM catches you, y'know!" His voice is teasing, and he smiles at her.

"Sounds like a good start, though. You ever heard of yoga? Tai chi? They're both great for balancing practice." He sweeps through a a tai chi pattern, in demonstration. "Good for keeping up muscle and flexibility, too."

She makes a face at him, exaggerating displeasure. Scout had been in a few shows, before, nothing regular.

"Only vaguely. But there was a game I was taught called Flow, when I was little, that looks kind of like that."

"Oh, a game? Sounds interesting. What were the rules?" His smile shifts into a cheeky grin.

She shakes her head, mock-sorrowing. "Not that kind of game. It's all about, oh, pitting yourself against gravity in different ways. But if you're teaching small children balance and how to move well, it goes better if you make it fun."

"Ah, I get it. Kinda like gymnastics mixed with the floor is lava or something?"

He's literally made the floor lava, but he's not going to tell her that.

"So this is what you've been sneaking off for."

Of course Lambert would wait to speak up right as Scout lifts her feet over her head; funny thing is, the Nightrider seems to have popped out of nowhere. He's still testing the limits of the necklace the Ringmaster gave him, so he's in a patch of shadow under a tree, leaning against the trunk and grinning at her. Unlike her, he's not sporting any new changes -- likely because the form he'd been bound into had been so similar to what he already was -- so mostly, he's here to see where one of his nightrunners has run off to.

Scout has a premonition just before he speaks and actually starts to lurch as he draws breath. Her tail comes out of that perfect circle configuration and angles this way and that as she wobbles on her forearms, sweating with clenched teeth, trying with all her might to not fall over.

She does manage to recover her balance after a perilous several seconds, and then considers her next move. Are there any really dignified ways she can get out of this position? She is not having a conversation like this.

Well, there's one really good way. If her feet were normal it wouldn't be a problem - none of the ways to get back in a normal position would be a problem - but she's not totally used to these yet. Scout plants her hands and heaves her weight forwards, straightening her elbows and the curve of her spine, pointing her tail skyward. Full handstand, not too difficult. She shoots Lambert a glare between hanging strands of hair and then resumes looking straight ahead, ignoring him.

Bending at the elbows, she shoves off and manages to hop, swinging her feet and tail so they overbalance her and flipping over in midair. Scout touches dirt a little before she expects to and stumbles, wide-eyed, but she made it, she didn't fall over this time. She straightens up really, really tall and exhales in relief, too distracted by this whole display to remember for the moment that there was talk happening.

To his credit (or probably not really) Lambert doesn't further interrupt Scout as she moves through her routine, but he does give her a shit-eating grin as she glares at him through her hair. When she does finally make her landing, he raises a brow and holds up ... eight fingers.

"I'd give that a solid eight out of ten. Nice somersault, but still a little wobbly on the landing." She's back to being closer to eye level to him again, huh? Oh well.

"With moves like that, you should consider putting in for being an acrobat. It'd make an interesting act, anyway."

"Show me that you'd do better," she says haughtily, brushing pine needles off her arms. Scout is mussed and sweaty with effort and bruised in a few places, which in fairness is a very common state of being for her. She spends a significant amount of her free time either meditating or taking exercise. "I'm sure I can find you a couple of those really long heel shoes."

Now, taking care to keep from putting a foot wrong since she's being watched now, she goes for the container of water she'd brought out here and drinks a long pull, then pours some over her face. "I danced and wrestled sometimes last time I was here. That's enough. I didn't train to entertain people any more than you did."

Not that she knows much about his training, but she might as well turn that crack back at him, even if obliquely. A lot of people who've passed through here could put their fighting moves to the purpose of spectacle.

Fairly late in the afternoon- when the carnival is more shadows than sunlight, although not completely- Joker comes striding by and pauses to watch what Scout is doing. It's not a strange sight, in his opinion. After a year in the carnival, you got used to people trying to figure out how to work out the way their bodies had changed.

Scout can probably remember him crashing into every god damn thing in the carnival when he first got his wings, in fact.

"Gettin' a hang of it now?" he asks lazily, spinning the enormous umbrella in his hand just as casually.

He's not really trying to startle her and so, of course, she doesn't sense the Force warning her before he speaks. Scout mistimes the landing to a leap and kicks frantically at the ground as it's coming up at her. The end result is a dramatic flailing stumble and catching herself on a tree.

Her skin is dark enough that the flush barely shows, especially in this light, but she can feel the heat and does her best to rest her forehead against the bark, though her horns get in the way. "I thought I was."

Oh, welp. Joker winces sympathetically, the expression of a man who flew backwards into a pole once. Even before she gives her answer, he can imagine it well enough.

"Sorry, didn't mean ta startle ya. Guess ya were really focused, huh?"

"I'm always focused," she says, and sighs. He's not here to mock her, and honestly if he was it would be very easy to turn it back on him. You lose a lot of dignity working at the Carnival for very long and it'd be hard to forget him and the wings.

Scout pushes herself back off the tree trunk and back onto the tips of her toes. They're hoof-claws now, bronze gleam partially hidden by dirt and pine needles. "Could be worse, I guess. That thing I was in the Game Cube was pretty messed up. Did we ever have anyone grow an extra head? I mean, Tiamata and... who else had multiple heads, but I never asked if they'd come in with them."

Some species are just like that, after all.

Not hiding his interest at all, Joker leans over to get a better look at her feet. While it might be awkward for some of the newbies to be looked at with such interest whenever they get new changes, Joker trusts that the workers who've been here a while don't care as much. At least, so long as it's not too rude or assholish.

"Multiple heads, huh...?" Straightening up, he rolls his head around as if that can dislodge a memory. "I mean, I know plenty of folks have grown new mouths or more eyes- like Amethyst, y'know- but I ain't too sure on a whole head." He stills and grins at her.

"But y'know, sayin' that out loud almost guarantees ya might get a change like that some day."

Obligingly Scout balances on one foot and holds the other out. It's somewhere between the paw of some kind of big cat and a hoof. Three thick, solid weight-bearing toes that can only bend slightly, tipped with heavy brass claws or hooves. The inside of each foot bears a smaller, more mobile digit bearing a large curved claw which narrows to a wicked point. From the way part of it gleams more brightly, she's sharpened it. Her skin up to partway up her thigh has darkened and grayed like old tarnished bronze, with the slightest hint of a jaguarlike multipart spot on her calf. "It looks like a tusk-cat foot," she says. "They're pack-hunters from Naboo. My tail and horns look like they're from Naboo too, but a completely different animal. I guess people ride both there, though."

She makes a face. "I had another one in the Cube. That's enough. That's plenty."

Laughing at her distaste, he leans back. "Fair enough! I guess everyone's had one world they wouldn't want ta go back ta, travelin' with the carnival after long enough." The vampire world, he's certain, is permanently banned even by the Ringmaster. The Matrix too, probably. Now that he thinks about it, it's been a real shit year.... Well, he knew that already.

Hopefully it'll clear up from now on, however. He has a lot of years to work to get what he wants.

Curiously, he nods back down to her feet. "Looks like they're pretty sharp- did that yerself, then?"

"I wouldn't put it that strongly. It's a place. I wouldn't want to live there, but I've seen worse. I just don't like the Game Cubes!" It does seem like the past several months have seen more intense visits. Scout's last tour hadn't been without danger, but usually the worst to come to the Carnival grounds itself was rowdy, over-strong visitors.

"They were blunt. I took my knife and just cut some of that away." There's this in their favor, it's easier to trim and shape metal hooves and claws with a vibroblade than it is to try to maintain metal toenails. "I mean, I still need to climb things sometimes."

"Ah." He clicks his tongue in understanding. "So it's for more practical reasons than just bein' prepared to take someone's shins out, huh?" Hey, sometimes you have to ask. People take to their changes in all sorts of different ways, sometimes for sensible things and sometimes to make someone else's lives a living hell. He tries not to judge too much either way.

"Yeah, but I'm not gonna say that's not a factor! Those boots I had were just brutal in a fight." She hadn't liked them much, they'd been heavy and hot and awkward, but they'd been wonderfully tough and rugged, too.

Scout's a great unarmed fighter, if pitted against people who are at or near human levels of strength and ability. She spend a lot of time practicing. Now she's got to try and adjust.

"What- " He places his hand over his heart, looking far too offended to be serious in any way. "Ya wouldn't be honest with me, Scout? Why, I'm the most trustworthy guy in the whole carnival!" This is almost definitely a lie. The most trustworthy guy is probably Steven, who's, like, ten. Barring him, then Zecora, who is a zebra.

"Still, think about repurposin' those boots? Can always fiddle around with things, if they're worth it."

"What? Why would I ever try to hide anything from you?" She's not as polished at exaggerated reactions as he is and kind of looks dully surprised. "Everyone knows, I can't lie anyway, so why would I bother?"

Scout taps at the ground with her hoof toes, kicking up a film of dust that further dulls the metal. "For what, though? Or for who?"

"I mean." His gaze goes up 'innocently' to the sky. "The newbies might not. And we're always gettin' more and more new faces by the day." So, theoretically, she could figure out a way to work around that whole lying thing.....

But anyway.

"Dunno." His gaze comes back down to earth. "For yerself? Bet ye could make boots that take inta account hooves and claws and all that, dependin' on what the best parts of 'em are."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(no subject)

Pretty early in that time

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject