Finders Keepers

[all_too_familiar]

Sometimes witches have powers before they turn. But this is rare, uncommon.

More often, a potential witch displays almost nothing out of the ordinary at all. Just, say, a little more skill with people, a little more natural charisma. An extra dose of something that could almost be called luck, if one were paying attention and on the lookout for witches.

There is one such maybe-potential, right over there. He's not from around here, but he is fluent in Italian and French and German and he professes that English is his first language and laughs when people call him a liar because of his perfect accent. He might not be the most powerful, but a polyglot witch could be useful for something. And who knows, maybe there's more to it.

Maybe someone would care to find out.

Comments

[honey_twining]

"If it's that small? Probably not. They have enough money to buy any materials they want in any quantity they like, shaped however's convenient. I don't think they're lacking for anything that's genuinely too rare for them to get."

[poll_the_stars]

Yvette thinks she can do way better than what arbitrary money can buy, actually, because there are some things that arbitrary money can't get you, but the ability to transmute stuff into other stuff can. Not that she wants to go tell the Volturi that if they don't want her they're stupid. But she thinks they're stupid if they overlook transmutation. Even very tiny transmutation.

She needs chemistry books. Also a degree in, in - everything, she would like a degree in everything. Biology and geology and chemistry and anatomy and a thousand other things that she could use this fantastic power for. Can she do stuff that belongs to vampires? Let's test it, for science. She pulls her transmutation zone into her pinky finger, copies the material of the nail, and pushes it at the poor abused rock.

... This is harder than transmuting bark. She frowns, and pushes harder.

It goes, but slowly, and then part of the rock is made out of vampire fingernail.

"... I am kind of too excited to think of legitimate ways to exploit this right now, I mostly just want to run around cackling," she observes, looking at the newly transmuted rock. She bounces a bit, grinning.

[honey_twining]

"Well, you have this uninhabited island on which to do that, if you like."

[poll_the_stars]

...

Yeah, okay. She won't resist. She cackles, and zips over and hugs her brother.

"I have transmutation," she stage-whispers.

[all_too_familiar]

"You do!" he laughs, returning the hug.

[poll_the_stars]

"What can I even copy, I need to practice using it, gah I can't think of anything good to use it o-" She pauses. "..... Hey, the main sticking point for the, experiments was keeping them from decaying."

[honey_twining]

"They're already frozen by now," Edward says.

[poll_the_stars]

"True. Mm."

[honey_twining]

"You can still try copying them, but it may be that they're no longer usable."

[poll_the_stars]

"I am aware."



She takes to being a vampire very well. She noticeably has a temper, but she's usually more angered by the urge to rip something's head off than whatever caused her to want to rip something's head off. This translates to occasional growling and stomping off to brood instead of ripping off limbs or attacking anyone. Her power becomes a good port of call when she's upset: even when she's not trying to figure out the lengths of her power, she seems to find it very soothing to push transmutation at objects.

Blair is very good at dealing with her, and avoids her wrath almost entirely. Edward is not so lucky, but Blair thinks helpful instructions at him and this helps. They manage to keep everyone's limbs where they belong, though lots of trees get some very passive aggressive makeovers. (Yvette conscientiously puts them back when she's done, otherwise a human might notice eventually.)

Books are fetched for bored vampires to read, along with interesting materials for Yvette to copy; newspaper, glass, cotton, things that he can easily get without stealing.

(Blair's highly tempted to steal something made of, say, gold, but he gets the impression that his companions would find this objectionable, even if he put it back after Yvette copied it. So he doesn't.)

She plays with her power most of the time. There's a lot of nuance to it, once she gets to playing with it. At first it's simply pushing copies of other materials she's made at the entire transmutation area, but then she figures out how to push the material at part of it, and then claws her way to two different materials at once. Then, she works at fine-detail manipulation. Stretching out the area that she can work with is hard - it does not want to work over a large area. It wants to be a small amorphous blob. She growls at it, and then starts figuring out how to shape the blob. If she keeps it as thin as she can get it she can stretch it out further into something to get at it for transmutation. This is tricky. Also not very fun.

She'd like to have a larger library of potential materials, but for that she needs to get off the island. And to get off the island, she needs to be safe.

... She wonders what the plan is for getting her to not be a murderer. Waft things smelling of humans in front of her, test her control without any actual person in danger?

[honey_twining]

The plan is to have her near an actual human, ideally one who can't see her, with her minders by to decapitate her if necessary. Things that smell of humans might be useful preliminaries but will not actually test her control. They can't duplicate the sound of a heartbeat or the warmth of the real scent.

[poll_the_stars]

Okay. She gives herself a few preliminaries, though, because she doesn't see how that would hurt.

And then - time to test her self control.

(She's incredibly nervous.)

[honey_twining]

Edward goes to tell Esme and Carlisle.

And they find someone to invite on a canoe ride, and go by the island, while Edward and Blair are standing by Yvette. If she lunges, the human will never know.

[poll_the_stars]

She does not lunge.

It's unpleasant (she wonders how the hell Blair managed to casually hold conversations with her while she was human, how any of them managed it), but she keeps herself very still and breathes in and out evenly and runs through her 'I will not eat people' litany over and over in her head at lightning speed. She will not eat people, here are her reasons why, she refuses to be something she does not choose to be and she does not choose to be a killer.

And then the human drifts out of her range of scent. They probably just had a pleasant canoe ride.

[all_too_familiar]

Blair hugs her. It seems like the thing to do.

[poll_the_stars]

Yvette giggles a bit.

"I'm not up to interacting with them yet, I think," she pronounces. "But! You did not need to rip my head off!"

[honey_twining]

"That was very impressive," Edward comments.

[poll_the_stars]

She grins at him.

"Thank you." Pause. "I do think I'm going to go eat a deer, though."

Inhaling flames is not fun.

[honey_twining]

It's entirely reasonable that she eat a deer. (Edward stays within range of her, in case she decides to go for a swim abruptly.)

[poll_the_stars]

She eats a deer! It does not cross her mind to go for an abrupt swim; she's busy in some mix of happy excitement and trying to better her methods for not killing people.

[honey_twining]

That's good then.

[poll_the_stars]

She is very proud of herself.




But (possibly to Edward's surprise) she does not get cocky. She does not want to leave the island just yet. She'll have a few more unknowing humans sent past her before she's even willing to be visible to them. So a few more humans are sent past her, and she doesn't lunge.

And then, tentatively, she thinks she's ready to be put in front of an actual human, and maybe try talking to one.

[honey_twining]

Well, they don't have any knowledgeable humans handy, so this means interacting with them in normal human contexts, which means going back to Rochester.

[poll_the_stars]

Eep.

Well.

That'll work. Tentatively. Because that's where the vampires are that could stop her, and because she's managed self control several times without fail.

(Such eep.)

[honey_twining]

Edward will stay right by her and react if she lunges at someone. But maybe she'd like to stick to going out at night, so there will be fewer witnesses and they won't have such good line of sight.