prodigaljaybird | (no subject)

Jason hasn't slept a night through since he was fourteen years old. It's nothing new, half his nightmares so familiar they happen almost by rote, though there's a few that still manage to terrify. He goes to bed in tired expectation, feels his body sleep and his brain light up. The fighter in him smiles and welcomes the chance to meet each falling crowbar with something better than child-sized fists, meet them with guns and blades and bombs, and in his dream Jason doesn't start screaming until the shadows grow long and bat-shaped.

He falls asleep in silence.

Jason wakes to his own gasping breaths in bed and the earth shifting beneath him.

"What the f - " he starts, but the world only shakes harder, something in the movement focused, personal. It's shaking his bed harder than anything, and Jason reaches out against the attack, seizes the gauntlet beneath his pillow and wishes it was a gun.

"You'll fucking wish - " he bellows, but as soon as the words leave him he feels himself forced violently back, propelled from his sheets and right into the air. His heart races - his bed's so close to the wall, he's gonna hit and there's no time to twist, nothing to grab, nothing to stop him and it's too fucking late to -

Jason's body flies through the bamboo with a mighty crack and is caught by the ground, coming to rest a dozen yards away with great rivets of earth in his wake.

There's a million things he should be doing. Lying there stunned feels like the best start.

[ooc: open to all in game, posted privately for preplay~ Jason just blew out the side of his hut, still in the boxers and tank top he went to bed in. His power is the sonic scream.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Billy's been walking for a while now. He isn't sure why he woke up early, but ever since getting out of bed, a strange feeling has been crawling over his skin. It feels like pins and needles but not quite, like something is trying to catch is attention from a million different directions at once.

Walking seems to dull the sensation a little, and eventually Billy hopes to tire himself out enough to sleep a few more hours.

He's moving along, hands in his sweatshirt pockets when a scream nearly pierces his ears, followed by a crash. Billy stumbles back a few feet in surprise, trips over something and lands on his ass in the dirt, breathing heavily as he tries to figure out what the hell is going on.

And the buzzing feeling still won't go away.

Jason breathes through the ringing in his ears and sits up slowly, eyes narrowed against his own swimming vision as he searches for his attacker. It's startling to have to look over great walls of dirt - whatever it was hit him hard - but when he does Jason finds no sign of the enemy, just Billy lying similarly nearby.

"Are you okay?" he calls, too dazed to be angry. "Do you see them?"

"I'm fine," Billy calls back. He's still on the ground, staring up at the sky as he tries to figure out what the hell's going on and how to explain that he was just startled.

His ears are ringing slightly, but he manages to get up easily, brushing dirt off his jeans. "Do I see what?"

"Whoever hit me." Jason gets a knee under him, and then another, and then he's standing, still finding no one but Billy in the clearing. Tentatively, he sucks a breath into his lungs and finds it doesn't hurt, rolls his shoulders and feels them sing with pain. All the damage is to his back where he went through the wall.

"Whatever hit me," Jason amends, fingertips skimming his chest. "It put me right through the wall. Should have a bruise the size of battering ram." He looks at Billy. "You didn't see anything?"

Billy shakes his head, stares at the gaping hole where there used to be a wall, and all he can think of is how pissed off Bucky's going to be.

"I just -- I heard someone scream and then you came flying out."

"I didn't scream," Jason mutters, but even as he says it he wonders. It had all happened so quickly, the wall shattering at his back drawing most of his focus, but there'd been a sound like a giant fist punching the air.

He puts both hands over his ears, squeezing until the ringing fades. "I feel weird. Weirder than a guy who just dug the Grand Canyon with his back." He groans, and the earth beneath his feet quivers as if shocked. "Fuck."

"What the hell," Billy gasps, stumbling back again. He stays on his feet this time, opening and closing his hands, confused and unsure where to go or what to say. The disorientation coursing through him is familiar, something he can't name or find a reason for, but can recognize without trouble. "What's going on?"

Jason stares at the ground, feels the same fear that'd been coursing through him when he woke to his bed shaking. "Stop," he says, soft, experimental, and it doesn't, in fact it shakes harder in the patch where Jason's voice is aimed.

"Is it me?" Jason wonders aloud, gathering his breath. "I said stop!" The word flies from him as invisibly as any other, yet Jason could swear he sees it, a thick funnel of air that lifts him off his feet. He has the sense to flip this time, landing breathless and safe a few yards away. "It is me."

The sound makes Billy wince and stumble back again, and he feels like he's never going to get the ground under his feet again. That he'll spend this entire weekend unsteady and unsure.

"You sound--" he can barely hear himself over the ringing in his ears, and raises his voice. "You sound like Banshee."

Almost afraid to press his luck by speaking again, Jason half-whispers, one hand in front of his mouth, "Banshees are real in your world?" He's never heard one, but he does recognize the fucked up noise that just came out of him as something else.

"I'm Black Canary!" Why the fuck couldn't he be Superman?