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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 15:47:31 GMT -6
"We might as well start working on trying to control it," he said. "The sooner you get the hang of all the new things you can do, the sooner you can stop having accidents." Hopefully, anyway. The kind of accidents Avander might have now were probably going to be dangerous, and while he didn't live inside the house, Aster wanted to limit the amount of property damage he was subjecting himself to. kome wasn't built in a day, but he felt like if he could at least get Avander's new offensive capabilities locked down, that would be good enough to head off the worst of it.
As he spoke, Aster could feel Avannder's alarm receding. Seeing him go down had given the Wiurn a shock, Aster supposed; it didn't happen often, or at least not out of the blue like that. By now Avander sounded almost equable when he said, {It felt sort of like a bad sneeze.}
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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 15:48:01 GMT -6
"Does it? Try to concentrate on that. Let's see if we can replicate it first," Aster said. Hastily, he added, "But point yourself away from me, got it?
{As if I wasn't going to already,} said Avander, {Who wants to look at you?}
Aster ignored the comment, taking it in stride, and waited instead for Avander to act. If he was being honest, there was a small childish part of him that just wanted to see the raw destructive force of it--- though not head on, of course.
“Ready?” And then, in a moment of whimsy, he said, “Sing for me, Avander.”
The Wiurn shot him a look, but he recognized well enough that this was the promised signal. Aster watched the deep intake of breath, watched the air go in and the chest expand, thinking Avander was going to stop any time now only to watch it keep going and going.
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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 15:48:37 GMT -6
Only when his chest cavity seemed to be filled to almost a painful degree did Avander finally let loose with a deafening wave of sound.
It couldn’t even really be called a roar at that point. It washed over the clearing like… Well, like a wave; Aster couldn’t find any other way to describe it. It flattened the grass in an area around them that spread outward, filling the entire space with sound. Even standing behind him, Aster felt the force of it, and had to hold back a grimace.
{Whoa,} said Avander, having surprised even himself with the force of what he had just done. For once, Aster didn’t have a clever quip or comeback. The two of them stood there in silence for a moment, before Aster shook his head.
“That’s a doozy alright. I might have to find some hearing protection for… No, no, we’d better get this over with.”
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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 15:49:22 GMT -6
They didn’t have time to delay this, and this demonstration made it clear that Avander could replicate the effect, so now it was just a matter of practicing, and then of separating it from the act of roaring.
“Alright, let’s try something different this time. I want you to roar--- just a regular roar, not this other stuff. I don’t know what it is that you’re doing but maybe you could… take less air? Pull it back a bit, muffle it or something?” Aster was really hoping they’d be able to figure out how to get Avander to do a proper roar soon. It’d be a hassle if Avander had somehow lost the ability to manage it, and had to learn again from scratch.
{I’ll try,} said Avander, though his tone didn’t necessarily inspire confidence. He took a breath, and Aster held his own, but fortunately it was a much shallower one this time.
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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 15:49:43 GMT -6
Avander held onto it for a moment, then released it, though his mouth only opened partially, teeth half closed as if to hold back the noise.
The resultant sound was definitely not the wave of force that Avander had loosed before. It was still loud, and though the sound of it had changed in quality from what Aster had been used to hearing from him as a Sarane, it was passable as a roar in a general sense--- a low rumble that carried over distance, not entirely unlike thunder.
“Good,” Aster said. “Alright, good enough. Just… hold onto that for next time, and maybe I’ll mix some roars in while we work on your… singing.” His worst fears hadn’t happened. Or, well, maybe he was being dramatic; it wasn’t really a worst fears situation so much as it was a big inconvenience if Avander had lost the ability… But all the same, it hadn’t come to pass.
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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 15:50:21 GMT -6
{Singing,} Avander echoed, his tone decidedly dry. The corner of Aster's mouth tugged up in a wry little smile, but he said nothing more on the matter. {Well, I'm ready when you are then.}
"Sing for me," Aster said, and immediately clapped his hands over his ears. The sound didn't start right away: Avander had to take his breath first, the same long one that seemed to go on forever the last time. This time Aster counted the seconds, to give himself a more realistic estimate of how long it actually took. And also to give himself something to do that wasn't waiting in dread for Avander to let loose with the bellowing roar.
One. Two. Three.. Nearly ten seconds went by before Avander had gathered enough breath, and he held it for the space of another full second. Aster didn't allow himself to relax, or at least he thought he hadn't, but it still made him jump a little when the wave of noise finally broke over him.
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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 15:51:25 GMT -6
"Yeesh," Aster said. "We're going to get a noise complaint from our neighbors if we keep this up."
{I thought we didn't have any neighbors,} Avander replied. {And this was your idea.}
"We don't, but that doesn't mean no one lives around here out of earshot from that," Aster said. More cheerfully, he added, "But if they show up, I'll tell them to take it up with you. I'm sure if you snarled a bit, that would set them straight."
{Why, I'd never,} Avander said, which was only sort of true; Aster didn't have him snarl, but he'd certainly been tasked with driving off unwanted visitors before, mostly by virtue of his looming, glowering presence. It was just as well, since he didn't have the personality for real menacing, though Aster would teach him to act it if it turned cut they ever needed more than the implied threat of his presence.
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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 15:52:13 GMT -6
But now he was bigger, and the unspoken threat was greater because of it, so Aster felt confident that it wouldn't come to that.
Still, it seemed to be a success so far, even if Aster wasn't exactly enjoying the process. He reminded himself that the sooner they got it over with, the sooner he could put it behind him. "Sing for me," he said, and clapped his hands over his ears once more.
It soon became clear that it wasn't really getting him to produce the shock wave that was hard. There were things Aster wanted him to amend, but since he was already used to roaring, the physical process of this sound wave didn't take him long to figure out. As he'd put it, it was just sort of a bigger, deeper, more concentrated roar in a new body.
The one thing Aster did want him to work on was speed.
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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 15:53:03 GMT -6
"I don't want you to do it if it feels like you're going to hurt yourself, Aster said, "but do you think you could pull the air in faster?" If he couldn't, then it was just a limitation of the attack that they'd have to work around when trying to use it, but a target was probably not going to stand around waiting for whatever he was going to drop if they saw his lungs expanding like that. Aster knew that he wouldn't if he was facing down an unfamiliar beast. Granted, this wouldn't necessarily be what he was expecting to come out of it, but plenty of creatures here had real nasty breath weapons in different flavors. That was already bad enough for him.
{I think so. Let me try,} Avander said. The way he sounded, he didn't seem to think it was a very difficult thing to do, which was promising.
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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 15:53:58 GMT -6
"Sing for me then," Aster said, covering his ears and stepping back from Avander, After he spoke, he began counting down the seconds again. This time, it only took Avander seven seconds to draw the breath, and Aster didn't notice a significant reduction in the amount of force he felt, though he wasn't bearing the brunt of it, to be sure.
With that in mind though, he said, "That was good. But wait here a minute while I get you something for targets. I want to see how much force you're actually bringing to bear." Without being the dummy for it, hopefully. He'd had a taste of it, and he'd already decided that it was quite enough for him, thanks.
Fortunately, it was the kind of thing that was easy to find on the property. Target practice was something that came up a lot when your trade was training creatures for combat, especially since the advent of injections were making elemental abilities more and more common.
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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 15:59:52 GMT -6
It didn't take long for Aster to track down a variety of barrels and stakes and scarecrows. He set them up at different distances from where Avander had been practicing, to see just how tar the sound wave would reach, and at what point it stopped being effective enough to knock something down.
"That's that," Aster said, wiping dust off his hands and walking back to Avander. He waited until he was firmly behind the Wiurn before giving him the signal to begin though. "Sing for me, Avander."
Avander took another breath, and Aster could see him really making an effort to do it faster. There was a moment where Aster thought he looked a little uncomfortable, but the sound wave, when it came, was still pretty loud. And now, with the dummies and barrels in place, Aster could see the force of it on full display for the first time.
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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 20:16:59 GMT -6
It was a pretty big cleaning, and Avander's sound wave got through about half of it before it finally lost enough force to stop knocking things over.
"Looks like I'll have to set all that mess back up again," Aster said, looking at the aftermath and shaking his head. "Well, I guess it's my own fault for bringing so many.”
{It is pretty dramatic,} Avander said.
Aster sighed and went out to rearrange the targets. He opted to take most of them out and left only a line that went along the length of the clearing this time, and he set them up further apart, up to the distance where things had stopped falling down last time. It took a little while, during which Avander could rest himself and do some thinking if he so wished, though Aster suspected the Wiurn was simply taking a break without much else going on.
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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 20:17:35 GMT -6
Once he was satisfied with his handiwork, he returned to where he had been standing before and gave the command again. "Sing for me," he said, his hands already positioned around his head. Immediately, he clapped his hands over his ears as Avander released another avalanche of noise.
From there, it was a lot of practice, setting the targets up and having Avander make a go at it. It was probably just as well that the targets imposed a break between repetitions; otherwise Aster felt that being asked to do it so many times might cause strain on Avander's throat, or... wherever that was coming from. As it was, he watched Avander carefully for signs of discomfort, but it seemed that his body had the capacity to handle what was being asked of him. The Wiurn raised no complaints, or at least not the kind that ought to be taken seriously.
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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 20:18:05 GMT -6
End: Sonic Blast
And with practice, he did get faster at it, to the point where Aster was satisfied. It would never be instantaneous, but by the end of it, the breath didn't take much longer than a normal deep breath. It would serve well enough for their purposes. And now that it was clear that Avander had the hang of what he was doing, it was time for them to wrap this up and move on.
The question was just one of how to get Avander to do what Aster wanted him to do next. He thought back to asking Grunty to breathe fire for him, and decided to start with something similar. It had worked last time, so there was no reason not to try it again. And if it didn't work, then they'd try something else, but he'd cross that bridge if he came to it. "Come with me," Aster said. "Let's change things up."
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Post by Noa on Feb 25, 2020 20:19:11 GMT -6
Leading Avander to one of the straw dummy targets, Aster righted it and patted its shoulder, the way one might when presenting an old friend. "When I give you the signal, I want you to try freezing this. Not with ice, like when you make the wall, but with your breath."
The Wiurn gave him a look, but after a moment, he seemed to decide he might as well. It hadn't been something he had been able to do when he was still a Sarane, but then, neither was the thing they'd just been working on. {What other surprises should I know about?} he said.
"You'll find out," Aster replied.
{I feel like I'm going to wake up at the end of this not knowing who I am,} Avander said, but he shook himself off thoroughly, then turned to face the dummy square on. {Alright. What do I do, just breathe on it?}
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