Not playing with a full deck

[morethanimaginary]

Savannah is bored. So bored. Darren is off doing something that involves being a huge nerd, and at the moment, Savannah's weekend is about as interesting as a tumbleweed blowing in the wind. Which is, not very. There's nothing to do in Forks. It's a boring, sleepy little town, and doesn't volunteer 'exciting things to do' very often.

She wants to fix this. So, she asks her dad, and he obligingly drives her to an Interesting Place. That is, the woods. She'll go on a long, long walk, and enjoy the scenery. It's raining, of course, but Savannah's gotten used to that annoying feature. A bit of rain never permanently hurt anyone. She thinks.

Walk. Walk walk walk. Trees, verdant scenery, rain, deck of... cards? What?

Comments

[cardistry]

"Vague magical guesswork? Yeah, reconfiguring it if you get something you hate isn't a huge hassle."

[castmyown]

"Okay, then there's no reason to delay, I just don't want to be permanently stuck in a stupid outfit. How do I accept you as my weapon? Just like - saying it, or...?"

[cardistry]

"How about - Of my own heart and will, I choose this partnership," he suggests, altering the original activation password slightly.

[castmyown]

"Of my own heart and will, I choose this partnership," repeats Darren, dutifully.

(Squeeeeeeee maaaagic magic magic magic magic magic magic magic!)

[cardistry]

The jokers begin to glow, in a shimmering shifting rainbow of brilliant colours. A similar glow covers all of Darren's clothes. Simultaneously, both glows shift their shape; Darren gets his cool outfit, and the jokers transform into a sinuously S-curved staff, embossed with twin lines that start at the end and spiral all the way to the top, where they flare out into stylized wings. When the glow fades, the staff retains some of that rainbow shimmer.

"Awesome," he says, sounding satisfied and relieved and maybe just a little nervous. "Okay. Area Search..."

A sphere of multicoloured mage-glow appears at the end of the staff, between the flared wings, and darts away immediately.

[castmyown]

Darren glances down at himself, and snickers. "Okay, props to clothing design. I feel pretty."

He looks like a wizard. A proper wizard, too, with a billowing cape and something that's sort of like a robe, or half of one. Because he has pants, underneath, he is not going to save the world in a dress. It's colored in blues and blacks, with gold trim that's just subtle enough to avoid being tacky.

"Follow the light? I'm guessing?"

[cardistry]

"Yeah, but I can teleport, so we don't have to go flying after it right this second," says the staff. "Just have to wait for it to find—ooh, it's close."

A strange geometric figure appears on the ground under Darren's feet, drawn in moving lines of multicoloured light - two five-pointed stars inscribed in a circle, rotating in opposite directions, with the circle contained in two similar counter-rotating pentagons themselves inscribed in another circle.

And—now they are where the deck of cards is, the magical diagram flaring and fading beneath them.

[morethanimaginary]

There is Savannah.

She is playing solitaire. With a certain deck of cards.

"Uh - Darren? Darren, what are you wearing. Are you - are you cosplaying, what they hell, how did you even -"

[castmyown]

"Magic is real!" cackles Darren.

[morethanimaginary]

"Oh, fuck." She looks at the deck of cards. "Oh, extra fuck."

[cardistry]

"Grab that deck!" yells Darren's winged staff, as the cards start zipping back into their box. "Don't let it get away! I should probably teleport us to somewhere with more disposable scenery before I start blasting, but we have to catch it first if I'm gonna do that!"