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Public Service - On the Edge, Monday, Period 2

Reno was going to try to keep this relatively short and sweet today - he had no intentions of bursting into song in front of his students today, thanks. So he just waved everybody through the portal, and then led them down one of the long alleyways to one of the city's few little patches of sunshine.

There he stopped, and waved at something that would have been absolutely unremarkable anywhere else in the world. It was little and yellow and frighteningly delicate looking, barely alive.

"Don't step on the flower."

In case anybody around here was even remotely like him, maybe.

"There are only two places around here where these grow, yo. This ain't never been one of 'em. And I'll let you all get back to construction this week if you wanna - it's going pretty good - but we gotta talk about this. If the locals find it, maybe they'll take care of it, maybe they won't. The flower itself ain't the point here, though. It's the ground under it."

Hopefully his students saw what he was getting at, here.

"Maybe there are other ones out there. Maybe there's something to this. One tiny frigging buttercup is godsdamned revolutionary around here, yo. The ground's been dead in and around Midgar for decades." A beat. "Discuss."

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Flowery!

Anders

Cosette Fauchelevent

Four

Karina Lyle

*PUPPEH KISSES FOR ALL*
(Minako Aino)

Kaylin Neya

Kathy Li

Andros

It's tiny. It might as well be a weed. But Reno seems pretty impressed with it, so it's probably a big deal, right?

It was tiiiiiiiny. It needed guarding, right? Right? Minako inched closer before laying down on the ground, big sad puppy-eyes regarding the flower.

Her tail thumped occasionally, but other than that, she was just going to watch the flower.

Minako was doing an excellent job of guarding the little flower. Kathy knew, because she kept coming by to check on her. And the flower. But mostly her.

Look, after yesterday, Kathy wasn't taking any chances with puppy!Minako's safety.

"Who's a good girl? You are. You are."

MINAKO! MINAKO WAS THE BEST GIRL!

Her tail thumped a little faster and she gave Kathy her best puppy smile. See? Everything was fine! She was the best ever for keeping flowers safe. And Kathys. Well, she'd have been better at Kathys if she hadn't been a puppy, but a puppy could only do its best.

It wasn't Minako's fault that Kathy was in this shape. She should have listened to Minako's warnings and stayed far, far away from her scary roomie!

No, not her roomie. That was definitely not Flick. It just looked like him and that wasn't his fault.

...And if she said it often enough, maybe she'd stop flinching every time she thought about him.

"You're definitely the best girl," Kathy assured her, bending down to give her an awkward one-handed pat. "You're gonna get so many treats that when you turn back into a girl, you'll have gained fifteen kilos."

One tiny bit of ground that's capable of sustaining plant life is remarkable, around here. Does anybody but Reno think we should be doing something with this? He's got a few ideas, but he'd like to hear everybody else's input and see where people's heads are at, here.

"Well, it has to be used for either food or medicinal herbs," Anders said definitively. "I don't think there's enough land here for gardening, so I'd say elfroot. Thing will grow anywhere and help fix just about anything. I know you have potions but more ways to heal never hurt."

He was willing to debate the point: It just felt good to talk about healing, to be back on firm ground after the slippery marsh that had been life as Albus.

"I'd like to get an idea of how much of the area is fertile," Kathy said, trying to see if there was a visual difference between the ground around the flower and the rest of the dead earth. "Maybe take some soil samples?"

She shrugged, trying not to wince as the motion pulled her injured shoulder. "Is elfroot edible? I'd rather plant something that does double duty, you know? Food and healing both. Dandelions or burdock or blackberries or something."

"Blackberries, mint or ginger, maybe," Anders nodded,in agreement with Kathy's basic theory. "Dandelion's so bitter and I don't know burdock. What does it do?"

He spotted her injury then, and raised his eyebrow and unconsciously touched his shoulder, then mouthed After class? He wanted to heal her -- or at least hear the story -- but it could wait until the end of the hour.

Edited 2014-11-10 22:58 (UTC)

She nodded, giving him a grateful smile. The sooner she could get out of this cast--and this rib tape--the happier she'd be. Later. He could hear the whole sordid story later.

"If you cook it, it's not terrible," Kathy said. "And the sap can be used for glue. But I think burdock is a better idea. The leaves and roots are edible, the stalk can be twisted into fibers, and you can brew it into a tea to dispel toxins and treat skin diseases and destroy bacteria and stuff."

"If it's easy to grow I'm all for that one," Anders said. "It's an all-in-one plant. We won't do better."

"Grows well in sandy waste areas," Kathy said. "And I think it's pretty fast to grow. I mean, I'm no botanist, but it's something we could look into."

"This isn't really my area of expertise," Four admitted. "I can try to talk to someone in Amity?"

After the discussion, you're all free to go to whichever construction site you want. The monsters have been cleared out, and the locals have been putting things together at a pretty fair clip, so things are practically where they were back before people left for break, again.

Teamwork!

With their flowery personalities!

Kathy wasn't up to doing a whole lot today, not with her arm in a sling and her stupid ribs all taped. But if you needed anything, she'd be more than happy to try to assist!

"So," Anders said, sidling up after class. "Your shoulder. What happened to it?"

"Shoulder and ribs, actually," Kathy admitted. "I got into a a fight yesterday with someone who outclassed me by a long shot."

She gave him an uncertain glance. "Can you summon up a storm?"

Anders winced on her behalf. "Not unless you give me a week to practice and a couple big bottles of lyrium so I don't collapse as soon as I'm done casting," he told her. "Tempests are Primal magic. I was never much use at that. The person you got into it with could?"

He sounded mildly alarmed. He hadn't known anyone on the island had magic that strong, or at least not magic they were inclined to use publicly.

A gentle blue glow began to pulse around his hands as he prepared to probe the severity of her injuries.

"He could teleport, had telekinesis, could whip up hurricane-strength winds, fling lightning, and set fires," Kathy said, sounding tired. "Possibly more, but that's just the stuff he used on me."

Anders' probe would discover multiple contusions and bruises, likely cause from, oh, the jagged edges of rocks and branches being whipped around in a gale. A shoulder that had been dislocated but put back into its socket. And a cracked rib that had been set.

"I stopped by Barry's yesterday," she explained. "He was the only other person I knew was normal."

"I wasn't normal," Anders said, shaking his head. "Good thing you had Barry. Hold still."

He raised his hands and directed warm, tingly balls of spirit energy to Kathy's bruises, gritting his teeth a bit at the greater effort required to heal the rib. After the process was well underway, he felt confident enough to talk.

"Sounds as though I wouldn't have come out of it much better than you did," he said. "Is he still on the island?"

Edited 2014-11-11 01:43 (UTC)

"No, it was Flick. Or, rather, whoever Flick had become over the weekend," Kathy said, closing her eyes in relief as the energy did its work. "Some guy named Chase. Evil, powerful, way above my paygrade."

Anders couldn't have a serious conversation and heal at the same time, so he simply nodded and waited a moment more until he'd done all he could.

"So it was possession," he said, an odd flatness to his voice. "Kathy, I don't like this. What I had was one thing -- Albus was benign -- but if some of us were violent it's terrifying."

"You're telling me," Kathy said. "Trust me, I crashed in Minako's room last night just to be safe from the guy."

With the spare bed pushed in front of the door. For, umm, reasons.

"But what makes you think possession? You weren't possessed, were you?"

"Would I know it if I was?" Anders asked. "Look, all I know is some force that wasn't us was moving our bodies around and making decisions. Whatever force got into Flick's body could have killed you easily. To me that's close enough to possession even if it doesn't precisely meet the definition laid out in some dusty book."

"Except can't a possession be fixed? Like, a demon thrown out of the body or something?" All Kathy knew about possession was what she gathered from scary movies and whatnot. "I don't think we can do anything about what happens on Fandom weekends. Not like that, anyway."

Could they?

"Sometimes you can get a demon out of the body," Anders admitted. "But it's not safe or easy. Usually the best cure is death."

He twisted his short ponytail thoughtfully. "I've never heard of a possession going away on its own, so you have a point there. But I still don't like it."

Edited 2014-11-11 03:30 (UTC)

"And death is so not an option in this case," Kathy said firmly. "These weekends are weird, but they happen and they always go away on Monday. So unless you know a way to revive someone afterwards, it's not gonna happen."

Anders still didn't like the entire thing, but he wasn't sure how he could make the point any more than he had, so he drew a long-suffering breath and sighed.

"I suppose I can refrain from killing anyone I think is possessed," he said. "Or at least wait until Monday to see if they get better on their own."

"That's very kind of you," Kathy drawled. "We on the island generally prefer to keep our friends as not-murdered as possible."

But then, to show that she was cognizant of the great efforts he was making (and was still more than a little scared of Chase, no matter how well she hid it in banter), she added, "You do have the right to bind them and keep them locked away in some kind of safe room for the duration, though."

"If I'm in my right mind I'll do that," Anders told her. "And if I ever seem at all dangerous, you should do the same for me."

"Complete with backup," Kathy said, taking a deep breath and holding it for a moment to savor the lack of pain. "Barry kind of lit into me yesterday about tangling with that Chase guy all by myself and getting my butt handed to me for it."

The worse part? He'd been right. Chase could have killed her with just a little more effort and there wouldn't have been a damn thing she could have done about it.

"Barry was probably right," Anders said, sounding tired. Some of it was from the drain of healing: Some of it was just from Kathy being Kathy, stubborn and determined to save the world on her own. "Give me a second to recover from healing you and I'll yell at you about it too."

Though when he opened his mouth next, what came out was not yelling but singing.

If you need a friend
Don't look to a stranger
You know in the end, I'll always be there
But when you're in doubt
And when you're in danger
Take a look all around, and I'll be there

Edited 2014-11-11 17:09 (UTC)

Well, the world could use a big dose of saving, couldn't it? And Kathy had been working towards that even before she'd developed powers. Now she had a far more tangible method to do so.

Her lower lip was trembling as Anders finished up his impromptu serenade. Sure, it was weird, but no weirder than the weekend was, and, more importantly, it was true. Eyes shiny, she leaned forward to give Anders a tight hug.

"Might've needed to hear that," she whispered. "Even in verse."

Anders was surprised -- by his singing (though he'd meant it) as much as by the hug -- but only hesitated for a second before squeezing her back.

"I can't yell at you when you're hugging me," he whispered. "Is this your evil plan?"

"Well, it wasn't before, but now you're not actually giving me any incentive to let go," Kathy pointed out. "It's not often I get to use my powers for evil."

"I can't argue with that logic," Anders told her -- though he was loosening his grip, just a little. "Well, by the way you're hugging me I'm guessing I fixed your rib. So that's good."

He's alternating between singing 'Tiptoe Through the Tulips' under his breath, and trying not to look too overwhelmed by the idea that maybe the Planet is willing to give the locals a second chance, at least in fits and starts.

Con crud, whyyyyyyyyy.

Mainlining Vitamin C today, wow.

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Public Service - On the Edge, Monday, Period 2

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