Dashing Through the Snow (Devyn)

[Olivia Chance]

Skiiing wasn't her thing.  But neither, really, was walking across the ski hill to get to the lodge when people were going down on their skis and snowboards at a breakneck speed.  So she just sat on the side hoping no-one would go off the groomed part of the hill and run into her.  Maybe later she'd venture to a lodge or something and make fun of the ski bunnies that rented skis just so they could hang out and meet boys instead of actually going skiing.  Olivia had heard of that actually happening and the thought amused her.  In the meantime, she'd try to learn to control water with her powers.  With so much snow about, she had to at least try, right?  She hovered her hand over the lump of snow next to her and tried to concentrate.  After a few minutes of that, she gave up.  No results.  She sighed and hit the snow with her hand in frustration.  That's when it exploded, turned into water form and splashed over her jacket.

"DAMN IT!"  Her jacket was luckily not real leather.  It was waterproof with fleece lining.  Still though, it being wet wasn't exactly something she wanted despite the fact she wouldn't get cold as a result.

Devyn Solway

[Devyn Solway]

Devyn loved snowboarding; she pretty much loved snow and the winter time. It was the season when she was born and her birthday had not been that long ago. She felt like an official adult now that she was eighteen, even if she pretty much done everything a twenty-one year old would have done. In fact she pretty much did a lot at the age of fourteen and a little into being fifteen years old. A lot of that was thanks to her first girlfriend who she was currently not trying to think about. In fact she was trying to forget about all relationships and the drama that she had been dealing with for a while now.

The ski trip was helping out a lot with it, minus the fact that now they were in an even smaller environment so she did see those that caused her pain around a couple of times. She still stayed away from them; well that person, because that was what was asked of her. Even if she still wanted to try and be friends and to make things better, she was leaving it on them if they ever wanted to deal with her anymore. For now it was all about snowboard, showing her skill with the board that proved that she had been doing it for a while at least.

The sounds of water followed by a loud ‘damn it’ reached Devyn’s ears through the hood that she was wearing. Her eyes quickly looked around for the source of the odd sound and the usual sound that did happen to pop up from time to time in skiing. She was shocked to see a girl pretty much dripping with water and with snow that looked like it had been rained on around her. Okay, power related I’m assuming. Devyn thought to herself as she did a quick swerve on her board to stop and unclasped her boots from her board.

Then picking up her board she walked over towards the girl already unzipping her jacket. “Having a power struggle there?” Devyn asked with a small smirk on her face. She shoved her board into the snow so she would not have to hold it while she worked on removing her jacket. “Take your jacket off and wear mine so you don’t catch a cold.” Devyn said, more so trying to be nice but she kind of gave it out like an order. Habit.

[Olivia Chance]

Olivia heard the voice and looked up. She couldn't help but shake her head at the pun.

"Yes, a power struggle. Struggle with powers. I get it. Very clever. Wish I'd thought of it. But I'm dripping wet and that isn't so funny." Then she was offered the jacket and Olivia arched an eyebrow.

"I can't take your jacket. Then you'll be cold. Very counter-productive. Then I'd have to give you back the jacket you gave me, and it would just become a vicious cycle, wouldn't it?" She chuckled.

"Besides, my jacket's pretty well insulated. And my powers work automatically so I'm pretty sure that if I started getting cold because of it, they'd remove the water. Thanks anyways though." She took the time to look the person up and down. Someone who had basically issued an order. Well the joke was on them. Now that Olivia was free of her home and family, she didn't take orders. Not from teachers, not from students, not from anyone. She did what she wanted. Right now, that just happened to be going along with whatever Bellefonte Academy cooked up. Olivia saw the snowboard and smirked.

"So you were bored. Ing. But puns aside, that looks like a sweet ride. Where'd you learn, out of curiosity? I might want to try myself sometime."

[Devyn Solway]

Devyn started to laugh a little at the girl’s words of the pun. She had not actually meant for it to come out as a pun and literally meant it as the girls have issues with her powers. "Wow, I didn't even catch that I did that. I must be losing my touch." Devyn said, still snickering over it. She really needed to get back in the game so she didn't miss those perfect chances to say something. Her mind apparently was still in it since she said the words, but only half in it since she didn't even catch it until the other girl pointed it out.

"Yes you can, because I offered it to you. Plus I have been snowboarding all day and I'm pretty warm. Plus the cold does not bother me much." Devyn said, already having the jacket off by now since she had been removing it the whole time. She had a hoodie underneath it and she really could handle the cold a lot better than some other could. Her power made her feel nothing but the cold since there was no heat in the darkness. The other girl however still seemed confident enough that she had nothing to worry about because of her power or something.

Devyn didn't fully get what she was getting at and so still held out her jacket for the girl to take. "Even if your power would automatically start to remove the water, the fact is that at the moment you are wet and could catch a cold. Did the water get at your hair at all?" Devyn asked. She didn't plan on pushing the matter for long. If the girl didn't want to take the coat and wanted to use her powers to pull the water off of her jacket then that was her choice. The subject then moved on to Devyn's board, with a pun tossed in there. Devyn shook her head but chuckled slightly in any case.

"Thanks, it's my personal one and my dad taught me a few years back. Well sort of taught me. When we first went snowboarding we both tried it out and he got us a teacher since we were both pretty bad. He stayed bad at it while I just...got it." Devyn said, not sure how else to explain it. "I can teach you if you want." Devyn offered after a moment, figuring she could help teach some of the basics at least.

[Olivia Chance]

Olivia couldn't help but smile. She immediately liked this person, and she couldn't say quite why. When she was offered the jacket again, she rolled her eyes and took it.

"No point in arguing about it either I figure. Thank you. I don't exactly have control over my water manipulation quite yet anyways. I was banking on the fact that it would kick in automatically like it has before. And..." She touched her hair.

"Nope. Apparently I automatically protect my hair. That's extremely weird. Some weirdo subconscious thing I guess." Olivia shrugged. She heard the other girl talk about the board and she chuckled.

"Sounds like you have an awesome dad. I'm kinda jealous. And...I doubt I'd catch on very well, but I appreciate the offer. I've never been very good at sports. Music and reading, yeah. But anything sporty...I don't exactly excel at it." Then again, the last time she'd tried she was fourteen, a year before she went into the two year coma. So maybe things had changed. Maybe it wasn't just that she'd suddenly gotten boobs.

"I'm Olivia by the way."

[Devyn Solway]

Devyn grinned when the girl gave in and took her jacket. She tended to always win in the end, at least on some level when it came to this sort of thing. Devyn was just trying to help after all and she never understood why people made such a big fuss when someone was trying to help them out. Sure she understood people had to be guarded because not many people did things just to be nice. Yet, she didn't have anything planned for the girl, she had been just snowboarding and came across the girl and decided to help. "It's cool. Yet you might not want to wish for you power to kick in automatically. That leads to problems down the road." Devyn pointed out, speaking from personally experience.

She knew all too well what bad could come from your power deciding to automatically do as it pleased and figured it didn't hurt to tell the girl to not rely on her power doing things automatically. Sure it was cool when your power would do its own thing, but in the end it was not really a good thing when you yourself didn't have control over your own power. "Super weird, but powers do some strange things. Still, make sure you tell your trainer about that and work on getting that under control. Don't want to be using your power automatically and end up passing out from overuse of your power." Devyn added as she moved over to her board and leaned on it.

A honored and pleased smile spread across Devyn's lips when Olivia said that Devyn's dad sounded awesome. He really was awesome and she missed him. How she still wished that he was alive to give her advice and tell her if what she was doing was right or wrong. Sure by this point he would say she was old enough to make her own decisions, but still. "Well, I'm pretty good at sport related things so I'll help you out in what ways I can." Devyn said, sounding confident. Perhaps that was what she would do for a living. Perhaps she could do something involving sports or perhaps something related to BMX.

She gestured for Olivia to come over closer, looking over what she was wearing and seeing if she needed to give up her boots too. You could not just wear any type of shoe with her board; you had to have a certain kind of boot. "That is a pretty name, Olivia. I'm Devyn." Devyn said as she held out her hand to shake. She was not really going to really give away her gender and leave it to Olivia to assume either way. After all, she liked it when people confused her gender and it was not that hard to do, especially with what she was currently wearing. Decked out in her snowboard gear and wearing darker than normal goggles to protect her eyes from the sun.

[Olivia Chance]

She supposed that was right, that powers that kicked in automatically was bad. Then it was mentioned that she should mention it to her trainer and Olivia looked blankly.

"Trainer? We're supposed to have a trainer?" Olivia shrugged.

"I'm new at Bellefonte. Sorry about that. Even if I was told about that, it wouldn't be time for me to train yet anyways. Still recovering. Which might be a reason why not to try snowboarding, but I'm totally not listening. I want to learn." She smiled. She wasn't that much of an invalid.

"If you could teach me, you could go into a career because you'd be able to teach anyone. Depends. Are you up for the challenge of a lifetime?" She arched a brow and smiled, crossing her arms. Then she shook hands. Devyn. A unisex name. And bundled from head to foot in snow gear, it made it hard to tell if Devyn was a guy or a girl. For some reason though, Olivia thought Devyn was a girl.

"Good to meet you Devyn." No matter the gender, she could tell this was no snow bunny.

[Devyn Solway]

"Yeah, a person who helps you works with your powers to get better at using them." Devyn explained, figuring the other girl should already know such information at her age. Unless she was younger then she looked or she was a new student. That latter was confirmed by the other girl's very own words, meaning she was a late bloomer or there was something else behind it. Devyn was not going to ask, she didn't want to invade her personal life story, yet. "Well if it would be something that would get you or me into trouble, we might not want to do it. Might." Devyn said with a slight chuckle.

She had one too many strikes on her name and she had not made things better with one of her roommates so she was on thin ice. Yet, it was Devyn and a little risk was sometimes too much fun to pass up. "So long as doing it is not going to kill you or make something worse, I'm up for it." Devyn responded, not sure why the girl pointed out making a career of it. Was mind reading her ability? No, she was some sort of water user so perhaps it was just by chance that she had said such a thing and Devyn was over thinking things.

"I doubt teaching you would be a challenge of a lifetime." Devyn said with a chuckle, grabbing her board and laying it down on the ground. A challenge of a lifetime was getting a straight girl to bed, but Devyn had achieved that more than once, but then could the person say they were straight anymore then? Since she was not all that sure what the girl was wearing, possibly cause of the glare from the snow was still slightly bothering her even with the darker shades, she figured she ask.

"Are the shoes you wearing boots? Big enough to be uses on say a pair of skis or a snowboard?" Devyn asked as she held the snow board still with her foot. She gave a nod to the girl, when she said it was nice to meet her. She lifted her hood up on her hoodie, keeping the heat in her body longer since the other girl was using her coat, which again was completely fine.

[Olivia Chance]

Olivia shrugged.

"If I get in trouble, it'll just be me. I'll tell them that you had no idea I'd just come out of a coma. Oops now you know. Whatever. I'll lie. I'm good at that." She chuckled.

"Besides, you don't seem like a goody goody kind of girl to me." Yeah, she was pretty sure Devyn was a girl. Something...something seemed to say girl. Olivia couldn't explain it.

"And I'll be fine. I'm tougher than I look." And considering she went with the punk look, that was considerably tough already.

"You dare to doubt me?" She fake-gasped in shock and then grinned.

"But seriously you overestimate my aptitude for sports. Last time I tried, I face-planted into the ground. And I was just playing badmintion in PE. And yeah, my boots are big enough." She shook one of them in front of her.

"Ready when you are. If you're so determined to see how bad I am, who am I to stop you, huh? Maybe you're just a glutton for punishment."

[Devyn Solway]

"Yes, now I do know and now I feel like it’s less of a good idea for me to teach you how to snowboard. I don't want you to end up falling, hitting your head, and falling back into a coma." Devyn pointed out. She was fine say teaching someone who recently recovered from breaking an arm or leg since that was not that big of a deal. A coma kind of was, even if she had been in one sort of before. It was less of a coma and more of an exhausted sleep however so that again was not as big of a deal as a coma.

Devyn now could not help but feel like this was not such a good idea, because while she was all for being bad here and there, something she was not okay with. "I'm not, but you said you just came out of a coma, so it should be kind of expected that I'm going to be a little concerned. I understand the whole not liking a hospital and everything, but were you okayed to be doing this sort of thing?" Devyn asked, now wanting to be sure. She probably would still teach the girl but she was just trying to be careful. It didn't really matter if the other girl said it was her idea or not, Devyn knowing that she had been in a coma and still going ahead with the idea would still get her into trouble.

Devyn gave a nod and let out a slight chuckle when the other girl said that she was pretty touch. Even if she had the punk look to her, that didn't mean anything. There were some people that dressed that way because they liked the fashion or were just did it so they could act all tough but were still wimps. Devyn snickered as the girl asked if she had dared doubt her, revealing a story of just how bad she was at sport. That didn't really help the hesitant feeling Devyn had in regards to teaching someone who had just come out of a coma how to snowboard.

"I was just trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you think you are going to end up seriously hurting yourself, then we won't do it." Devyn said as she kneelt down in front of her board then. "If you think you won’t go back into a coma and are willing to try. Then step onto the board so I can strap you in." Devyn said as she looked up at the girl. Her eyes unable to be seen through the dark goggles she was wearing.

[Olivia Chance]

"I can handle a snowboard lesson." She was determined to learn now.

"I was okayed to go on this trip, and I'm not about let my brother ruin my life when it's two years down the road and thousands of miles away. I really am tough. If I can fall down two flights of stairs after getting hit by a bat and come away from the coma without brain damage, I can handle a snowboard lesson." Whoops. She'd gotten so riled up she'd mentioned the unmentionable. She went bright red and stomped her foot in frustration before sighing.

"Yeah I need therapy before this gets worse. Damn. Here I was trying to tell you I'm not a headcase and I just proved my point, didn't I?" She shrugged before stepping on the board.

"As long as you're comfortable teaching me, I'm good though. I'm not nearly as crazy as I seem, I promise. Well maybe I can't promise that but at least I'm not boring."

[Devyn Solway]

Devyn nodded and felt a little better when Olivia said that she could handle snowboarding and that she was okayed. Yet, the girl said more than just really made everything super awkward and worse in terms of how Devyn felt. She could handle talks about this sort of thing, when she knew someone and was prepared for it in a way. She was not prepared for this at all and she had just met the girl. She just felt so…off about everything now involving this girl. Her inner darkness causing her to think about the darkness of her past, but she quickly shoved that down.

“Dude, you are making me uncomfortable. Let me get to know you first before you start laying on heavy information on me.” Devyn said as she looked at the girl. She was being honest; she didn’t feel comfortable talking about such a thing with someone she just met. It was just…too sensitive of a subject to her when it came to abuse within the family. “Just relax a little and focus on snowboarding. Having your mind busy with those kinds of thoughts is just going to get you hurt.” Devyn pointed out. The girl at least knew that she had said so much and looked at least embarrassed or frustrated that she let such things slip out.

“Well with how you are talking you should go talk to some councilor or something.” Devyn said as she gave a small shrug. She was not good at really appointing people to talk to people in such positions since she didn’t really do it herself when she needed to. Still, if the girl was so open to talk about it then she was clearly seeking someone to talk to about it and get it off her chest. “Just making things awkward. Again just relax and let’s focus on this, okay?” Devyn asked, just waiting the girl to take a breath and enjoy herself.

“Certainly not boring.” Devyn said, moving to strap the girl to the board. When you were on a snow board, you and the board were one. “Alright, how does that feel? Not to tight or loose? Can you asl o bend your knees for me so if I can see if I need to make any more adjustments?” Devyn asked, as she stood up.

[Olivia Chance]

"Let's just try to ignore that I ever said that. I was pissed at myself and it slipped out. Sorry I made everything awkward." She shook her head. Then she looked down at her feet and the board. She bent her knees like she was told to.

"Not too loose or too tight. And I totally can bend my knees. I could probably touch my toes if I wanted to. If that's bad...I dunno." She shrugged.

"So you know I'm a water manipulator but you've got me at a disadvantage. What's your specialty, out of curiosity?" Her go-to conversation starter was kind of powers at Bellefonte Academy. She hoped that was okay to ask, or she'd start getting a reputation of being totally weird and of a person to avoid. That was the last thing she wanted. Just because she'd spent her childhood alone didn't mean she wanted the rest of her life to be like that.

[Devyn Solway]

"It's fine. I understand that certain heavy things like to slip out every so often. Means they are really bothering you." Devyn responded as she gave a small shrug. She was not going to hate or avoid the other girl just because she said some pretty heavy things. Devyn just planned to not think about them and instead focused on the task at hand. She was still a little bit worried about teaching the other girl how to snowboard, even more so since she didn't have a helmet to give her or anything.

When Olivia basically gave the okay with how she felt being strapped to the board, Devyn knew they were basically a go. She didn't actually recall what you were supposed to teach a beginner since it had been years since she had lessons. Everything for her was not muscle memory so she did have to take a moment to recall the best way to break it down. "There really is not much to it other than keeping your balance. Bending your knees will help you gain speed as well as get a level of control when turning." Devyn explained, scratching her head a little.

She tightened the straps of the board a little more to Olivia's boots before she stood up and moved to place her hands on Olivia's waist. Since she had strapped both of Olivia's feet in and they were not and Olivia was knew, she figured she give her a little push to get her moving down what remained of the slope Devyn had been going down; which was not much. There was a question them, about her power that had Devyn chuckling a little at how the question was phrased. "I'm assuming you mean my mutation. If that is correct, it’s called Shadow Beast Form, which basically means I use shadows to cover myself up and take the form of a beast." Devyn explained.

As she explained she already went to give Olivia a slight push forward. It would be enough to cause Olivia to go down the rest of the way at a basic speed. Even if she fell, there should have been no way for her to get seriously hurt, Devyn hoped.

[Olivia Chance]

Her mutation was shadow beast?

"That sounds awesome. Like wicked cool. Hard to control probably, but it sounds awesome." Way better than being a glorified special effects machine with water manipulation. Then Devyn pushed her down the hill, and she did her best to stay upright. Then she realized she wasn't having that much trouble and bent her knees to speed up. Olivia let out a whoop of victory.

Of course, she didn't realize that her mind was unconsciously manipulating the snow to keep her upright, but that was something else entirely. She reached the bottom of the hill safely, a wide grin on her face.