Andie leapt from building to building, each jump a little harder to land than the last. The closer she got to the pillar of smoke, the wilder and less predictable the wind became. Even the smoke itself was unstable. What had looked like gentle swirling from a distance was now a full on tornado. A goddamn vortex made of pyrocumulus clouds. Heh. Pyrocumulus. She’d been looking for an opportunity to use that bonus word.
Andie shook her head. No, bad. That was not the mentality to have right now. No jokes, this was serious. The vicious winds were clearly having an effect on the surrounding city. Not a physical effect, of course. Wind made of emotion couldn’t even rustle the leaves of a potted plant hanging from some old lady’s balcony. It was an emotional effect. People’s thought doodles were being blown about and knocked into other people’s heads, and Andie could see through the few windows without curtains that there wasn’t a single person in the storm sleeping easily.
She landed with a thud on the final rooftop, its ledge bordering the storm.
On second thought, maybe now really was the time for jokes - because it was serious. Humor had always been how Andie calmed her nerves, and wasn’t this the sort of thing heroes were supposed to do? It wasn’t enough to just save the day, you had to bring hope as well.
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…or was Andie going to let herself be intimidated by a glorified smoke cloud? No. Darkness, pain, fear… they were nothing. All that mattered was that little spark inside her that gave her the will to push forward, to do what was right. “Ooh… Smokey warned me about forest fires, but he never told me I was the only one that could prevent brain fires.” Andie chuckled to herself, and took a step closer to the storm of smoke in front of her. “I mean, what even is this… sugar-free Sauron bullshit?” She took another step toward danger, digging her feet into the ground to push back against the torrent of wind.
“So, are we going to do this?” Cedric’s voice came from behind Andie, as the boy in question made his way up the building’s fire escape. He’d been lagging behind ever since he missed a building and fell a good thirty stories just to land flat on his face. “Or are you going to keep practicing your stand-up routine for the rest of the night?”
“Oof, snippy! Somebody is low on Kindness… and quick to complain about speed despite being so slow!”
“Sorry, you’re right. That was insensitive of me.” Cedric took a deep breath and made his way over to Andie. “I’m just… worried about Dyllan.”
A brief silence came over the rooftop, calling attention to how startlingly quiet the mental winds were. “I know.” Andie turned toward Cedric and flashed a smile, half forced and half genuine. “Don’t be. Everything will be fine.”