voyagers | open } { how much trouble could he get into?

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open } { how much trouble could he get into?

When it comes to Alexander Abernathy, they answer is a lot. He could get into a lot of trouble.

And he'll probably drag Rafe down with him, let's be real.

See the problem with Alexander is that he's bored. He's easily bored, which is why the ship, in all of it's wonder and majesty, was able to hold is attention was able to hold is attention for a few weeks but now he's back to being bored again. A bored Afreet demon is a problem. Especially when he has access to copious quantities of alcohol. Because when you can set fire to things all on your own, you tend to investigate mundane things you can do with that particular power, especially when you have the power of the internet at your disposal.

And he's always really thought flaming drinks looked cool. Especially a Flaming Lamborghini. Which is what he's currently trying to do at one of the many, many bars located on this ship. He's mostly got the glasses stacked at this point and is working on mixing the part of the drink that's poured over top - his dad taught him to mix cocktails ages ago and he's probably going to bartend in college once he gets there - so he hasn't gotten to the actual fire yet, but it's coming.

When it does, whoever built this ship will probably forever regret leaving that much booze lying around.

---

Meanwhile another, less destructively minded teenager is also testing out some abilities of her own. After a brief trip home, Zoe Dabrowski can be found favoring a long sleeved Henley that hooks around her thumbs as she sits cross-legged on the main deck with a small potted plant and what looks like an old notebook. The plant itself is nothing more than a sprout, with a small purple bud at the tip, but she's looking to change that, given the right amount of time and concentration.

And, of course, the right spell.

When she finally finds the one she's looking for, she pauses for a moment, letting the fingers not holding the book in her lap drum idly against her knee as she tries to figure out the best way to approach it. She's still fairly new to her magic in a lot of ways, and there's a lot her mother didn't get to teach her and her father refuses to. But at the same time, there's always a chance she could figure it out for herself, which is why she took her mother's spell book before she left again. If he won't teach her, she'll learn on her own.

She glances from the book to the plant for a moment, before holding out her hand in front of her. She pulls at the magic somewhere inside her and anyone paying attention will see the colors around her hand distort slightly, almost like a thermal coming off the pavement on a super hot day. As she focuses, the flower in front of her starts to stretch towards it, arching up towards the sky until it very slowly peels back the layers of the bud and comes into full bloom.

She jumps up with a pleased noise as she finishes because she did it.

Then gasps as the pot tumbles off the end of the lounge and shatters on the deck.

Whoops.

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John has been helping and mentoring young people with their powers for years now. If they don't help them and find them, Ultra gets a hold of them instead and it gets worse (their powers are neutralized which leaves them hollow or they are killed or turned into agents). It's become a part of him to look out for young people with powers with that deep understanding of struggling to figure it out, how that can be scary, how painful it can be without someone watching out for them. He knows (extremely well) what it is like to have someone older manipulate you and use those powers for their own purposes instead, and it's maybe why he is so protective of young people who have powers.

It's not that he even means to notice this in particular, but he is always aware of his surroundings. His world has been about survival for as long as he can remember, and it means being constantly aware. It's why he sees the way that the young girl manages to make the flower bloom and grow unlike any power he has ever seen before. The people like him from his world, they always have the same three basic types (telepathy, telekinesis, and teleportation). This is something else. He's hardly aware of the pot shattering on the deck.

"...that was amazing."

Zoe startles, again, when she hears the voice, and she blinks at him, wide eyed for a moment. Forgetting other people live on this ship, same as she does, isn't something that happens to her often, but apparently it decided to happen to her right then and there. It's a moment after that that the words register as the compliment that they are - a compliment on her magic no less - and she, in true teenage girl fashion, turns completely beet red.

"If by amazing you mean my amazing clumsiness, then yes. Quite amazing."

And with that she's just going to scoop down and try to salvage her flower friend. Maybe there's a landscaping room on the boat somewhere. Or she may just steal one of the drink glasses from the bar.

She doubts the ghost waiters will care.

"I was referring more to that thing you did with making that flower grow and bloom. That was really amazing," John insists, stepping forward though he looks a tiny bit apologetic for making her startle like that. He doesn't know if she comes from a place where she needs to keep her powers a secret like he does. John spent much of his life seeing his own powers as a weapon (he was taught that, survival and Jedikiah's words in his ear ringing through), but what she just did? She encouraged something to grow, to live. It's not the powers themselves that make a person good or bad (make them a destructive or a beneficial force). It's what they do with them. "I've never seen anything like it."

Though he doesn't know what she is thinking, he lifts up a hand to pull an empty glass from the bar into his palm for her plant before he sets it down beside the dirt and shattered pieces. It's not that he uses his powers lightly in front of just anyone (in the lair where everyone has the same powers, it's instinct, it's part of all of them), but he wants to put her at ease if he can.

John has powers of his own.

Zoe's a mixed bag, really. As far as she knows, no one's actively hunting her people, but after Constantine they don't exactly go around bragging about it either. Then again, where she's from they're not exactly a new development. Magical people have existed since the world began. People just didn't always have a name for it. So at home she doesn't talk about it. On the boat, however, it seems like everyone is something. She's a little less worried about sharing it.

"Oh. That." She gives a bit of a shrug. "It was just my first go at it. I was surpi - " She's then distracted by the floating glass that's coming down to rest next to the mess she made and she almost immediately looks up at John. Then squinting.

She hates how auras look once you come through the door.

But he's not any kind of magical being she's ever seen (again, nothing new for the boat) but whatever he is, it's an odd sort of color, almost like faded steel blue.

"That is cool."

John has kept those powers so close to his vest, but he is starting to learn this is not a ship filled with saps. It's a ship filled with people who can do things too, and it makes him a little more worried about why they are all here. People like to use or destroy those with powers, but it would take someone with a lot of power to make this all happen.

He smiles softly at her reaction. After all this time, he's seen all kinds of reactions to that power (mostly from scared young people who have those abilities themselves and so they end up freaking out at first when John shows them that they're not alone). John uses that telekinetic power up the soil and the flower too with that telekinetic power until he packs it into the glass instead.

John shakes his head with a soft smirk. "Not nearly as cool as making a flower grow," he says as he floats the whole glass filled with a flower her way so she can take it. "But yeah, it is pretty cool. That was really your first time?"

In his experience, there's usually that bit of struggle when using a power the first time unless someone is especially powerful or especially good at that particular type of power.

"For that spell yeah." She glances between him and the glass until it floats into her hands and she flashes him a grin. Telekinesis like that isn't really something a lot of magical disciplines can do where she's from - not with that kind of control. It's said that people are able to enchant weapons to return to them - it's the working theory for how both Thor and Mjlonir were lost ages ago, but she doesn't always listen to stories when they come right from the mouths of gods. It's usually smarter that way.

"I've been messing with little things since I was a kid, but that was the first time I really sat down to try an actual spell. If I tried to do it again, the petals would probably explode or something." She then hands the glass off to him so she can pick up the pieces of the pot that were left behind and can toss them in the trash. "My mom used to say that magic never works the same way twice. If you get it to do what you want? Don't mess with it."

Once she's finished and the dirt is off her hands, she goes to take the flower back. "What you can do, though? That's really cool. I've never seen anyone with that kind of control."

It's what makes him look over at her with curiosity. John hears that word. Spell. He isn't really very familiar with literature, movies, tv shows, but he knows enough to realize what that word is associated with (magic and witches). He can't even say there's a moment of disbelief. They are currently floating on some kind of cruise ship against their will from different worlds. Impossible has a tendency of shifting then.

"Spell as in... magic?" She also mentioned doing things with it since she was a kid, which makes him curious. "How long have you had the ability to use magic for?" He lifts up a hand when she starts to try to pick up the pieces of a pot. They could be sharp, and he can move the trash can this way and wave a hand to lift up all those shattered pieces, dropping it into the trash can. John releases a slow breath, getting back to his feet as he looks down at her. "That sounds like it could get frustrating to not have it work the same way twice."

John shakes his head with a soft smile. "It took a lot of training and focus to get that kind of control." There is little that he is better at than shutting down parts of himself to focus on what he needs to do. It's instinct really to shut down and keep the walls up that allow him to focus, that mean his emotions don't get too out of control.

"Oh, I've had it my whole life. It's in my blood." It's in all their bloods. Magic was passed down through family lines, and while families weren't always tracked in the traditional mortal way, she knows that family is family all the same. That's why a lot of different magical disciplines and auras center in the same area. They absorbed those names, those teachings those practices.

Until, of course, they came to America and things started mixing together so much that they had to distinguish themselves further, but those who were truly old school - those who continued to fallen the Pendragon line as their leadership and those who still believed that the witches were direct descendants of Morgan Le Fay - still didn't mix at all. Witches were meant to stay with witches. Hardcore.

"And in a way it kinda is. But when it comes to some spells, you only really need to do them once."

You hope.

"I can imagine," she says softly rubbing a hand against the back of her neck. "I mean, I've seen some crazy skilled witches and the most they can do when it comes to moving an object with their mind is toss it at a wall."

John nods as she explains it. His own power is in his DNA (they're not human, which was something Jed continued to shove home again and again. they're not human and humans would never accept them). "If you've had it your whole life, how... do you feel about having them?" The powers.

The powers are what made him different. When he was human, just human, he had nothing at all. He grew up in an abusive situation, and there was little he could do to get out of it until he was found to have these powers. He wasn't human, and it saved him (and destroyed him and saved him again, gave him the family he's been seeking his whole life).

"There's nothing like magic where I'm from. Just people with different DNA who can teleport, move things with their mind, or read minds."

He says just people with different DNA when that is enough to have them hunted.

John smiles a tiny bit at what she says. "It's like a skill for us. No spells, just practicing over and over and over. You can do more with that ability, but it sounds like your spells and magic are a whole different ballgame."

Zoe and magic are complicated. She knows that her mother loved hers (loved as much as she can convey to an eight year-old, where every emotion is so much bigger than it is for an adult, as though they can make up for what they lack in size and maturity with pure intensity), but her father ... magic turned her father into a man she doesn't recognize and it's hard to reconcile the two sides of the same coin. The ecstasy of life and possibilities with the hard truth of the limits and the problems that not even magic can fix. But in the end, the answer is usually the same.

"It's part of me. I'd feel weird without it. The world ... you kind of feel connected to it, in a way. I don't want to be disconnected from that."

No matter what it costs her or what she loses along the way, she wants to be a part of the universe. That has to be worth something.

"Well, all magic is different. It depends what discipline you were raised in. My mom was a witch so she taught me to be a witch so that's natural magic through spells and stuff, but druids learn different magic - they have potions and heavy rituals, not so much with natural communion. Shamans focus on the spirituality and visions - like, they think Cassandra of Troy was a shaman." She still is, actually. She's working as "psychic" in the middle of Manhattan, but Zoe doesn't know that. "I don't know much about the Asian disciplines, but I'm still learning, so I've got time to figure it out."

"We don't even get our powers from the start. They generally develop when someone is a teenager." John was a different case. He was a special case. "But it's the same way for us, losing our powers... it's like being a really hollow version of ourselves. It's a part of us too."

He has seen it happen. John has seen Ultra strip people of their powers. They scream from the pain of having them ripped away.

It is something-- it is one of the only things that terrifies him for himself. All his other fears and worries are for the people who he feels responsible for, to protect and to lead and to train.

"So magic has different disciplines, and each one can do different things within it. Does that mean you can train yourself in how to do other disciplines too or do you have to stick with what runs in the family? The natural magic?" The curiosity is very genuine, and it is really helpless for him to reach out to another person especially someone younger who has powers of their own. He isn't always sure that he can help even people with powers like his, people like him, but he tries.

Maybe especially for all that time that he spent doing the opposite.

Zoe's never heard of someone losing their magic like that. She's heard horror stories about rituals that bind people's magic to someone else, allowing them to borrow their power for short periods of time, but those are mostly rumors. As far as she knows, someone can give it away or they can be killed - that's the only way to take their magic off the table.

"The natural magic is the one I'm strongest with," she replies. "But I can learn other stuff, it just won't come as easily. Like shaman rituals where they're navigating dreams or trying to channel visions would be harder for me, because it's not really in my skill set."

But it's not impossible. She could learn to do it, given enough time and practice.

John nods, because he can understand that. He is the strongest with teleportation after all. Cara is the strongest with telepathy. Russell is the strongest with telekinesis. They can all three do each of those three powers, but they're far better at certain aspects than others.

"Ours works similarly. We have the ability to do all three, but everyone tends to be best at one of the three. It's the one that comes most naturally even if you can develop the other skills." His voice is quiet then, thoughtful. "...channel visions? Wow."

Navigating dreams is something Cara could do. It's the easiest way to dig into someone's mind when they're sleeping. No guards up. Though most people don't know how to keep people out of their heads. It's not a skill taught.

"Yeah. I hear it's ... insane. It's like it takes over your whole body and all that matters is whatever you're seeing." Her eyes are bright as she talks about it because there's a lot about magic and about the different disciplines that she really loves, and that she doesn't quite understand yet, but she wants to learn more. That's the part that matters.

"I haven't seen it myself, but I've heard stories. It sounds ... amazing."

John shakes his head with a soft smile when he sees how bright her eyes get as she talks about it. It is clear she is very passionate about magic. It is clear that it is a part of her.

"It does sound... amazing, a little scary too but amazing. Not a big fan of anything that takes over my whole body." He has been there and done that in other ways, but it sounds like it would be amazing.

"They're stuff is all about out of body experiences. Dream walking and that sort of thing. A lot of shamans just sort of ... give themselves over to it which is kind of scary."

And probably why a lot of them are insane. Or ... some kind of insane.

"That's not my specialty though. I'm mostly just trying to work on growing things."

"That's pretty huge," John says, thinking of all the possibilities when it comes to making things grow, how important and valuable that could be. There are people who are hungry all over the place.

They could put a garden somewhere easily accessed by the lair and get food more easily that way if they had someone that could make things grow like that. Instead they end up scrambling to grocery stores, stealing food in the night in large quantities. "You look like you're doing good work with growing things so far."

She grins a bit, before nodding. "And I'm just a beginner. Given a little time and a little elbow grease, who knows what I'll be able to do." Which is what she's really looking forward to. Just seeing how far she can go, what the limits are to what she can do.

It's nice to be doing something, rather than simply reacting.

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