trans_9 | [Open, after the Veronica business]

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[Open, after the Veronica business]

Having missed out on all the fun of getting mangled and bashed by a monster with ignitable blood, Ruffnut was in the Sensorium's again. This was quickly becoming her favorite place in the ship because she could do whatever she wanted, fight as much as she liked and no one would tell her no.

Plus it made a pretty realistic recreation of the Isle of Berk

Plus she had to practice with these new lightning powers that Matt had given to her.

"Alright...alright I can do this." She coached herself holding her hands close together. A ball of sparks and energy began shivering and hovering between her hands. "HA! HA I knew it!" She cheered...all too soon.

A flash of light and the lightning blasted back into her sending her soaring through the air and crashing into the grass nearby.

There she lay smoke rising off her dried out and singed hair.

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"Ha! You ARE getting the hang of it," said the Overlord from somewhere above and behind -- specifically, in his minion's arms, some ten feet away or so. Not at all displeased by the backfire of that whatever-it-was, in fact he was grinning at her initial attempts.

"Yeah? Tell that to my eyebrows." Ruffnut complained sitting up, her hair frizzy and dried out.

"It doesn't hurt as much as I thought it would though." She admitted pushing herself back to her feet and admiring the hole she'd plowed into the grass when she landed.

"No one ever won a battle with eyebrows," Zetta said. That probably wasn't true, but lacking a specific example he'd decided it was better not to confuse the issue.

Surveying the girl, he said with approval, "Your mana power has increased."

"That's good right?" She asked not really fully understanding on what Mana was. He'd explained it to her but she was only half sure.

She gripped her fists sending little sparks from between her fingers trying to call forth the energy now flowing inside her, "It feels weird you know? I spent all my life trying to perfect my body and now...magic."

"What's the difference? Still comes from within you, right? You get stronger, it gets strong. It gets stronger, you get stronger." Zetta -- demons, really -- understood this instinctually. "The best thing you can do, I think, is to get to where you DON'T think about it."

Not a dig at her intelligence! (This is Zetta, who's he to talk?)

Ruffnut was staring intently at her hands as the pulsed and glow with electric energy, "Never was much good at thinking." She admitted before clenching her fists and throwing a few practice punches. "The powers of the gods in the palms of my hands." She added in awe at the flashes of energy. All things considered it wasn't particularly strong yet, but to someone who thought lightning was an act of god it was awe inspiring.

Whereas Zetta seemed to be doing a lot of thinking, looking at Ruffnut with an expression utterly indescribable.

Would he do something he despised for the sake of his apprentice?

The question had never come up before.

Ruffnut meanwhile had returned to the first exercise she'd been trying before, to summon a ball of lightning.

Her palms flat one over the other lightning began racing back and forth between the two hands. Where skin should char and burn instead it was absorbed and sent back out. The air crackled and her hair began to stand up again as slowly, painfully slowly a ball of light began to form.

Well, he certainly wasn't about to interrupt her. He watched thoughtfully as she strained to summon the power, with more encouragement in his heart than he'd felt ~~since his last apprentice~~ EVER, since he HAD NO PREVIOUS APPRENTICE.

Alright Ruffnut easy now easy! She began to shift her weight in her feet looking for her target.

A barrel painted to look like an Ohm was resting nearby. Focusing her eyes on the barrel she drew back her hands for a wind up and thrust forward!

The sparking ball of energy shot forward...and then swung back around swerving wildly in the air and catching her in the helmet sending it flying through the air and burying it's horns in the ground.

"GRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" She screamed in frustration sending bolts of lightning shooting wildly from her fingertips.

Zetta, in that moment, proved why he was the most badass freakin' Overlord in the cosmos, by performing the greatest display of power the universe had ever seen.

He didn't burst into laughter.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," he said. "Don't go off the handle on me."

How the hell...

Confusion as to how Ruffnut was even able to wield lightning aside, this particular Viking doing so made Kang nervous. At least with Astrid or Hiccup, or Stoick, he knew that they'd be smart about when to use it and when not to; this girl, on the other hand, was impulsive. Still, maybe he could offer her a few pointers if it was similar to how his own magic worked.

"You alright?" he knelt down next to her, offering a hand.

Ruffnut was panting when the lightning finally died down, steam rising off her skin where the sweat was evaporating from her. "I'm good, I'm OK I just...I needed that." She stumbled over to a bucket of water that had materialized nearby for a drink.

Then as she picked up the bucket she decided she'd cool off faster from a more direct route and dumped it on her head.

The resulting explosion of lightning was like if every dragon in Birk shot their fireballs at once.

When the blinding light died down she was in her own crater.

Even badass Overlords have limits, and that just crossed his. Zetta burst into laughter.

"Dragonguy." She greeted him in a daze and took his hand pulling on it to get to her feet.

"Thanks." She added with a lopsided smile as she bent down to collect her helmet. "Haven't quite figured out how the gods throw this stuff around yet."

"Ow...ow...shut up...ow." She mumbled into the blackened dirt as she crawled out of the hole, "Rain and lightning like each other, why'd that happen?" She coughed and a cloud of black smoke drifted out of her mouth.

"Kang," he corrected her, standing up with a slightly amused grin. Her hair was trying to escape its braids. "Where I'm from, it's not just gods that can do things like that. Any mage or sorceror can, and so can most dragons. I didn't know that you had magic potential."

"The explanation is science-y," he said between snickers.

"Look," he said, managing to calm down after a moment of effort, "try this: start with just getting it to the point where you can summon it without a ton of work. Once that gets easier for you we'll move on to step 2."

"Science." She said the word like it left a bad taste in her mouth. Science was Hiccup's deal. She was more about action.

"Alright...you got it, right away. Here I go." She mumbled laying limp in the grass.

There was a few minutes.

"Yep...any minute now."

Still laying still, maybe she needed a minute to catch her breath?

"I don't know if you'd call it potential." She muttered putting her helmet back in place. Sparks slipped off her fingertips as she let go and tried to smooth down her braids. "Guy named Matt helped me out. The um...Overlord Zetta and him figured out I could do it but so far it's um...messy." She grinned sheepishly. The area was sort of torn apart with burn marks and churned up soil.

A demon whose life-to-date is counted with five digits shouldn't get bored, but nobody seemed to have told Zetta that. After another couple minutes, the minion carried him over so she could nudge Ruffnut with one metal boot. Firm, not hard.

Ruffnut grunted and put a hand on the metal boot sending a discharge of energy through it. Still not fully aware of what things conducted electricity and what didn't all she was planning on was melting the boot a little.

Well you know what they say about the best laid plans.

"I think messy is an understatement."

Kang quirked an eyebrow ridge at their surroundings, and pointed at a convenient wooden target about forty feet away, a bit of fur and a crystal rod appearing in his other hand, "Ast kiranann kair gadurm sotharn." A bolt of lightning left his fingertips, scorching the target and causing a small boom of thunder.

"Yours is different from mine, but... I might be able to help. You have to be very careful with magic," he said.

The electricity raced upwards through the greave, eliciting a yelp from the minion. In one of those rare displays of semi-independence, she jumped backwards reflexively.

...And also reflexively dropped the Sacred Tome right on Ruffnut.

"Unf." Ruffnut felt her mentor clonk right onto her head burying her face deeper in the dirt. Nice soft cool dirt.

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