(no subject)

[prodigaljaybird]

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.]

Comments

[prodigaljaybird]

"Not here," Jason gasps back, "not when I went to bed anyway." But people shuffle on and off the island as fast as breathing, and even so..."Eden." Jason's still got hold of her, and he lets go as if burned, afraid of doing to her what he's done to the tree.

"That was me," he says, twisting his face away. "I felt it come out of me, I don't know - " His fingers find the scar on his scalp and press down hard, because it's impossible, and he's just - he's going insane the way everyone always expects him to. "I don't know why, what do you mean, what powers?"

[wishesandsmoke]

"Like superpowers," Eden says, breathlessly fast, as if rushing to answer might help to calm him. Glancing between Jason and the tree, it starts to sink in. "Special abilities. Manipulating reality or altering things' forms or —" She stops, licking her lips. "Controlling the earth. The dirt, the rocks, the —" He's let go of her, but she reaches for him, a hand on his arm even as she turns her concentration on the ground, setting it rumbling to fill the furrows he made back in. She's still rusty, getting a hang of what it takes to control this, but she's quick. Maybe it's just that having an ability before has given her an aptitude for it, but while it feels entirely different, it also feels natural.

[prodigaljaybird]

Jason watches, open-mouthed, and only thinks to close it when he realizes even his breath could undo her work. "That's you?" he questions, softly now, and feels a smile tug at his mouth. He just totally fucked up his hut, and his back aches like nobody's business, but this is...this is cool, and Eden has a handle on it. It's not that surprising when he thinks about it.

"You're good at it already," he grins. "How do you control it?"

[wishesandsmoke]

Eden smiles, pleased both by the praise and the fact he's no longer trying to make her run for it. "It's..." She rolls her shoulders, tongue pressed to her teeth as she searches for the right way to describe it. She's not sure she finds it, or ever will. "It's like there's this switch," she says. "Or maybe it's like lighting a fuse. You just... If you concentrate, you can kind of feel it there, something different in your head. Under your skin. It's instinctive, I... It's not exactly the same as what I used to do, but it feels a lot like it."