The Micro-Scenes Thread

I like that conversation! But it makes you think a student like that would sooner be put in ARC than Whatley. Even if it is a case of 'you live in ARC but you can have supervised visits to Whatley and can do remote classes and be part of activities"

Also, side question, what is the difference in sapient and sentient? Sentient is aware of your own existence and sapience is intelligent, right?

Benoftheflies wrote:

I like that conversation! But it makes you think a student like that would sooner be put in ARC than Whatley. Even if it is a case of 'you live in ARC but you can have supervised visits to Whatley and can do remote classes and be part of activities"

Also, side question, what is the difference in sapient and sentient? Sentient is aware of your own existence and sapience is intelligent, right?

Yes, sentience means (conscious) awareness of the environment as separate from oneself. Sapience refers to having at least some reasoning and planning abilities. This is measured on a scale and at least most mammals have at least a small degree of sapience in that they can make plans for something that happens in the future.

A feral child would not be kept in an institution like ARC, which is first of all a research facility and geared towards containing (potentially) dangerous supernatural patients.
Being feral means that the child grew up with little to no human contact. They need a stable family environment to (re)socialise them, and that is not something that ARC would be able to provide. Granted, Whateley is hardly better suited for this. Perhaps one of the more powerful psi-arts teachers would adopt the child, being a full time presence in their life for the first year at the very least, and then -slowly- introduce them to other children. Setting them loose in the insanity that is Whateley is a disaster waiting to happen of course. How far this particular child can be resocialised is far outside the scope of a micro scene of course.

Thanks for the response! I was thinking like CyberKitty. Because of her extreme mental issues (mostly onset by mutation and the surrounding issues, but not soley), she was locked up in an ARC institutional ward. It was protective for both Merry and those around her, but it doesn't mean it was the best environment.

I think if a kid mutates and becomes feral (like degrades in overall reasoning), ARC would be a good temporary place while they get things figured out. Unless that kid was a section 33 case, any bully who picks a fight may open a can of worms that can't be closed

keep her away from the ketchup

Astrodragon wrote:

keep her away from the ketchup

Because students are crunchy and taste good with it?

Marian Griffith wrote:

Astrodragon wrote:

keep her away from the ketchup

Because students are crunchy and taste good with it?

Exactly.
And once you have one, you need to have another. They're like chips that way.

Exodus
Chapter 2 - Midnight Flight


The interior of the Midnight Flight was like a disturbed Tahorru nest with workers running every way. Like the nest it might look disorganised and panicked at first, but on very close inspection it was anything but. At its center was the first mate Jon/an seeing that all the myriads of tasks that normally went with a preparation to launch got done. The only difference was that these tasks normally got done in the days, multiple, prior to disconnecting the umbilicals and grapple, not in the hours the ship was in transit after getting its final shove from the tug boat.

Strapped in his monitoring station in the zero gravity section of the ship, which like all freighters was most of it, Jon/an was direction his small crew of deck hands to verify and safe the myriads of equipment. He was working down the same checklist that the bridge crew was, checking off each item as his hands and eyes on the equipment stated it was secured for a high gravity burn. Because there were thousands of systems that had to be checked individually, he had appealed to the bridge to work from the emergency checklist rather than the standard undocking one. That way The less critical systems and equipment were further down the list and, if they inevitably ran out of time, at least the danger of catastrophic failures was considerably less. Not that he was happy with this, and neither he imagined was the bridge, but given the way the captain had just broken all rules there really was no other option.

He already had to flag a couple of items on the checklist for escalation to command. The most critical being the fact that their water tanks had not been topped off. Standard procedure when docking had fuel tanks filled to capacity first thing, even before unloading of cargo could start, but things like water and food was brought in towards the end of the stay at a station if at all possible. Not all stations they visited could be relied on to provide untainted provisions after all. The crew was not going to be happy with the water rationing locks he had set. Until he knew more about how long they would be travelling the rationing would remain in place. The captain could keep or release the locks, if he got around to reviewing the status updates.

"Jon/an," his planning for getting as much work done as possible in the remaing hours was interrupted by a priority warning. "Cargo is bad."

"How? Kha/du/an?"

"One big box only. No ropes on it."

Jon/an cursed creatively, trying to think of how best to handled it. "Kha/du/an. Leash it. One rope." He then switched to his own priority interupt for the bridge. "Jon/an. We have a box in hold. Who dropped it and how be it leashed?" After a moment consideration he added "Also, need off-duty bridge. Loose things in boxes and stow it."

He directed a couple more of his crew to new checks as they finished their jobs, while waiting for a reply from the bridge and hoping the cargo container he had floating in the cavernous hold was empty.

At the top of his console the countdown to full burn relentlessly ticked down far faster than the remaining items on his checklist. It was clear they were not going to get through it all, but at least the remaining items would be minor.

The priority alert pinged and he frowned as he read the message. Then he hit his own priority override in turn, while silently saying goodbye to the schedule. "Crew," he said "double time the job. Then run to the barn. We have the biggest box ta tie down. An put every wall round it." He re-checked. "An feed it."

He did not listen to the curses that were his reply. He was already running to the cargo hold. Whatever was in that one container, it was maximum structural mass, needed to be fed air and power and had to be shielded every which way the Midnight could inside its hold. Even if he was never involved with the actual negotiations for cargo, he had to tie down the thousands of standard containers the ship usually hauled. He knew the cargo one could find on this remote station and it was nothing like what they had aboard now for what must have been an ungodly transport fee.

On the run to the air lock for the cargo hold he contacted the bridge again, "Jon/an. Tell brass that primary checks will NOT be done all."

That got the expected instant reaction from the captain no less to explain himself. "Cap. Have ONE max mass box in the barn. Need to tie it down and rig feed and put bio, emp and security curtains. Is job for three clads and half day. I have one clad and two hours."

"Full manifest is half day, Mate" the captain was mad no doubt.

"Near same amount of ropes, cap. Just big ones. An no feed or sec in normal cargo. Am at hold now. Hand comm will stop."
He did not of course shutdown the communicator, but the amount of noise would increase a lot as the signal had to make its way through the double hull separating the hold from the spine of the ship.

In the end they managed between the four of them to get the job done in an hour, mostly by focussing entirely on securing the container against acceleration only and postponing the rest of the job until they were in transit. Pretty illegal all told, and if anything would go wrong during transition that container would go through the crew section on its way out, but it was the best they could do under the circumstances. Not to mention that they had still a ton of preparing to do before they could even somewhat safely launch.

He called the bridge on the run "Jon/an, box is safe for goin' faster only. Doin' the big stuff next ..." he checked the countdown "... hour."

"Ke/an," came the reply from the bridge communication officer, "Acceleration only? No manoeuvre, no deceleration?"

"Ay." was all he replied while thinking 'Allways the fancy words'. "Best we could do."

"The captain will not be happy," Ke/an warned him.

"Sure so," Jon/an "We need tying down air, water 'n stuff too."

And they did. Air processing had to be locked down and drained or the sudden accelleration would tear out the delicate filters. The slosh tanks for the many sources of water had to be emptied and put into pressurised containers for much the same reasons. He had no idea yet do about the sewage tanks. Those were normally drained by the station and reseeded before push-off. He couldn't vent them or they would not have working air processing anymore. Leaving it in the sedimentation tanks was dangerous as it would slosh unpredictably under acceleration. The tanks were build sturdy for that reason, but there was a limit to the forces they could take before rupturing.

"Kha/du/an, run to park and toss loose stuff in a box. Then help "Phar/an with water," Jon/an ordered. "Fel/ap/an fast look in kitchen. Then help Dah/et/an with air. Lock down scrubs first."

He himself headed to the to see what he could do about the sewage tanks. Maybe they could throw bedding into the liquid. Those would be unsalvagable, but better sleeping without blankets for a couple of weeks than having the sewage spill into the compartments and having the air recycling messed up.

When the clock ticked down to the last two minutes Jon/an ordered everybody to drop whatever they were doing and run for their crash couches. At the same time the bridge send the ship wide 'Manoeuvres imminent' alert and set the countdown timer to flashing seconds in bright red. There was no time for most of the lower decks crew to get into their pressure suits. Which was another safety violation, but they were racking up so many of those that more did not seem to matter anymore. Of course should something go wrong during acceleration or lining up for the jump gate they would have no chance at survival, but the entire crew knew that odds of escape pods getting picked up this far away from any station was purely theoretical at best. Nobody cared enough to go look for a crew that was wounded and broke and unable to repay the cost of a rescue mission. Even if theoretically it was required of both the stations, habitats and even the jump gate crew to assist spacers in need.

Jon/an barely made it to his own crash couch, as he had to check all his crew for having properly secured their safety harness, before the countdown reached zero and the emergency lighting switched on. The big engines far down the ship's spine had been spooling up for the past two hours but now fully came to life. Everybody groaned under the high acceleration, which would continue for several hours until the ship passed the speed at which the jump gate's field could snap it up. Jon/an though was not paying attention to that, nor to the heavy weight trying to crush him down. At least he ignored it to the best of his ability as he had more pressing concerns. Launch position did not allow his console screen to be in front of him, and moving to full power had automatically retracted it, but if he strained himself to turn his head he could see, barely, the summary he had programmed hours earlier. The tension in the straps of their one cargo container, pressure readouts of the water and fuel readouts, monitors of the air ducts and so on. The bridge of course was monitoring the same feeds as he was but they had plenty of other things to pay attention to and might miss a warning sign while there was still a few seconds to adjust.

The rest of the lower deck crew was either speaking softly through the local comm system, or had closed their eyes and concentrated on breathing. Which was getting increasingly harder for those who had not made it into their pressure suits. The suits had some support in place to counter the high gravity.

Won/Arr/Ce/annh interrupted the chatter well an hour into accelleration. "Why are some out of suits?" she demanded reasonably. As the crew's part time medic it was one of her tasks to keep an eye on the physical readouts of the entire crew.

Jon/an fought to draw in enough breath to be able to speak. "Was no time. Made seats ... ... only seconds."

The young woman's voice was also strained with effort but she had counter pressure and stimulants to help fight the weight pressing down on her. "Want die?"

Before Jon/an or any of the others could reply in the negative she growled, a little. "No matter. Add high oxygen mix. Try keep breathing."

The ship continued to speed up at crushing presssures and at some time as the hours ticked by he passed out.

* * * * * * * * *

At the bridge of the Midnight Flight it was the usual controlled chaos of a massive ship lining up for a warp transit while moving at a measurable fraction of lightspeed. The acceleration made every move a slow, exhausting effort and the oversized engines made precise control difficult. Military grade computers capable of handling these tasks semi-autonomously were far out of reach of the budget of even the largest trade companies. Assuming they were even for sale. So, the minute corrections had to be made by hand, while what computing power they had access to was integrating the ships hyperspace signature with the gate's warp field.

Scan was calling out calibration numbers every few seconds which the ship's pilot kept, based on the corrections called out by the navigator, adjusting for the slight wobble in the ancient gate warp field as well as the distortions in the spacetime caused by the ship ahead of them in the queue. All of them were going full out in their acceleration burns. It would take quite a while before the local space had settled down enough to not form a navigation hazard for the solar system.

Ahead of the freighter were several other ships that had started their run earlier, and more were following them. In fact, the line stretched all the way back to the station, hours of hard acceleration behind them. This was definitely unusual for such an out of the way station that rarely saw more than a handful of arrivals and departures each day.

If the bridge crew was curious why there was such an exodus, and why they were in it, they were too busy and too experienced to bother with speculating. Something had spooked the traders on Arghfhindallh-4-3 badly, and those that read the signs and were in a position to flee were doing so even now. It was enough that the captain put them near the front of the departure queue, proving that he was sharp enough to read the signs, whatever they may have been, well ahead of almost all other captains.

"Cap," the pilot called out. "Speed one." Indicating that they had just passed the minimum speed that allowed for linking up with the warp field, if only barely and allowing only a short warp.

Several minutes later navigation called out "Pre link." There was now a tentative integration of their signature with the warpfield.

This was shortly followed by "Count down. Final approach."

The Midnight Flight was now commited to gate transit, straining to get every bit of speed and field integration to increase the jump distance, while following the ships ahead of them as closely as the cycle time of the old gate allowed.

"Link is good. Count at ... ... 60." the countdown timer flipped to the 60 seconds countdown. "Field pulse zero point 2 increments. Signature increase linear." All were signs of a nominal jump gate insertion.

Those breathless last seconds that were at the same time frantic with last fraction of second adjustment and calm as they were now commited. Regardless of what they did, they were now commited to jump out of the system. They were drawing virtual particles from the gate structure to power up the ship's signature to the point where they could fold their own micro universe around themselves as they crossed the mouth of the gate. The higher the speed the more particles they could store up and the longer the fold would last. That was why fast ships started their run from the far side of the sun relative to the gate and had vastly oversized signature generators and storage systems to create folds that would hold out for thousands of lightyears instead of the four, maybe, that a freighter like the Midnight Flight could achieve.

"Alert alert," scan called out. "Storm signs at the gate."

The captain ordered "punch it" without hesitation. Storm sign was spacer slang for heavy energy fluctiation at a gate. Those were normal when a ship was pulled through. Of course, the departing ships would not have caused this call-out. Their affect on the warp field were expected and part of the cycle time. Out of sequence fluctations on the other hand were either sign of a gate malfunction or of a suicidal ship coming through in the wrong direction.
In the first case punching the ship through ahead of schedule would get them killed quickly. But in the second case not departing would likely kill them. By entering the warp their ship became partially disconnected from normal space time, the stronger the interface the further they would be pre-shifted and the less interaction they would have with normal matter exiting the gate.

The ship lurched weirdly as the pilot flared their own signature emitters and entered the warp field at the far edge of it.

Something massive emerged from the gate and in a nano second was past them, knocking the freighter minutely off-axis. Of more immediate concern was that they were ringing like a bell and the ominous crunching sound echoing through the hill. Obviously they were not pre-shifted far enough to avoid all interaction with whoever had, deliberately and either suicidally or murderously, transited a gate in the opposite direction.

The crew fought to stabilise their flight in the warp. Getting the ship on its original course would be impossible while they were locked in the field, but hopefully they would not be off by more than a oouple of billion kilometers rather than considerable fraction of a lightyear. In the mean time, the instability in the ship caused a real wave effect in the corridors that was not doing the rational mind any good. Even normal stability was weird enough that a majority of species prefered to ride out the warp heavily sedated rather than risk higher brain functions. The Honshi were not that badly affected, but seeing the room around them weave in and out of reality was a bit much for any species, no matter how hardy. They needed to line up the ship's central corridor with the space fold that was carrying them. After that they needed to find out how much damage they had taken. And how far short of their original endpoint they would emerge.

I was looking through some older messages from the archives of the CH.org site, and found a few I missed before - not the one I was looking for, sadly, but I figured I'd repost this one.

Tennyo waved her hand in front of a dazed Ayla Goodkind. "Ayla? Yo, Alyes, snap out of it! Jeez, what happened to him?"

Jadis Diabolik walked up and said, "I think he's going to be in his Happy Place for a while. I saw it, just as it went down, and I think he got overstimulated."

"Waddya mean?"

"It started when Envy got into another bitch-fight with Cytherea. Trevor tried to break them apart, but you know how their lust auras ratchet up when they are angry? He got a double blast of that just as Fey, Carmilla, and Vamp decided to try and help. Somehow, all their combined auras started to, ah, heterodyne is the technical term I think, and as a five-way powered catfight broke out, Trev got simply overwhelmed."

I know that Tropey is a shaggy dog, but please don't shoot him for this piece of silliness.

Everywhere and Nowhere All At Once
Sept 2007

OK, so Spring didn't go exactly as planned, but hey, I was new here and being one of only two students here who weren't, strictly speaking, mutants, I should've figured I might need some time to settle in. My head still hurts every time I think about that math class (but at least I passed it; the one time a senior stopped by to audit a day of it they had to take him out on a stretcher and he spent a week in ARC recovering), and I'm pretty sure I still got a bruise on my butt from getting it kicked so often in Martial Arts class, but what do you expect from a normal, uh, girl?

I'm still getting used to that, by the way. Suzan has been really helpful about that for some reason, and while I'm still a bit wary of what she's planning, I'm not gonna to complain! She's hotter than ever now, and I definitely still like girls, yep, no boys for this gal!

Anyway.

First period was a special topics course, "Theory of Extra-Dimensional Travel". I was told that it is usually taught over Winter term every few years but for some reason Mrs. Carson wanted it right away, and she had some specific students in mind for it, including me. Makes sense, I guess. I was told that Gateway was also on the short list for the class, which I could have figured, and those two upperclass girls who were involved in that trial mess in May were too, dunno why. There were a few others singled out that I didn't know, and some others who were allowed to enroll for the remaining open spots.

Oh, and I heard who would be teaching the class, and who the 'guest lecturer' would be, too. I stopped by at Doyle because I could tell I'd need an aspirin for my aching head soon.

Molly waved at me as I came in the room, and gestured for me to take a seat near her and the Poe girl, Kayda. I sorta tried to slink in as best I could, hoping to avoid either a glare from Mrs. Carson, or a creepily friendly smile from Ecila. I don't think she expected I'd be stepping into the line of fire when I sat down there, though.

We were sort of in the middle of the room. On one side of me was a girl who looked, I dunno, sort of Asian and sort of Hispanic? But who I somehow recognized. Which was nuts, because there was no way that person was here, not at Whateley, probably not on Earth at all. Also, 'person' may be a mis-statement, give where I ran into her. She seemed human, but not many other humans go places like that.

She gave me an odd look for a moment, then shrugged and turned back to another girl sitting next to her, the one with a gray-black cat in her arms and goggles over her eyes. I hope that cat doesn't try to get territorial, or Shroedinger might cause a bit of a scene, but whatever. I did notice that she didn't look quite like the girl I'd met, but somehow felt like her? Hey, not like that! Not that I'd mind, but I never touched her, honest. But she seemed familiar and, uh, unfamiliar at the same time. I'd say it was weird, but Whateley.

I didn't really notice the girl on the other side of me yet, so I didn't think anything much was up.

Another girl popped into the room - not through the door, just popped out of thin air - and waved to the first girl, who gave her the same confused expression she'd given me. She called out "Hey, Jenny!", which got my attention, and that girl's too. It was the same name the girl I'd met before had said to call her - she said it like that, too 'call me Jenny'. Maybe she didn't want to give her True Name, which I guess I can understand from some of what Grimes had said in that Magic 101 sort of class last term.

The girl she'd waved to said, "Do I know you? I mean, uh, I sort of think I do but not really?"

The other girl - who was wearing stupid many belts for some reason, and had goggles on her head (not wearing them over her eyes like the other girl, just sort of on her forehead) and had these weird David Bowie eyes, one green and one blue, set her bag and the humongous feather she was carrying down by a seat one row over. A puppy with a massively furry face poked its nose out of her bag, so I guess she had a familiar, too. "I get that all the time," she breezed back, smiling.

That was when I noticed that I really couldn't tell what she looked like. I mean, I could tell it was, well, her, somehow, but not really who that who was - how tall she was, what color her skin was, if she was fat or skinny, it just sort of slid off my brain somehow. More Whateley wackiness, I guess. I thought of peering over my own glasses for a moment. but decided it was probably better not to know.

Jenny, if that was her name - it seemed right, but not? I dunno - replied, "I, I guess I just look familiar. People always say that about me, you know?"

Yeah, I did.

Just about then I noticed that girl on the other side grumbling about something, and not quietly, either. "What the hell is she doing here?"

I looked over to her, and got more strangeness there, too. The chick had this kind of Goth look, pale white skin with sort of zebra stripe marking under her eyes, and it really didn't look like it was makeup. Despite this, you didn't really ever seem to see her; your eyes just slide off, and even when you did focus on her, she seemed not quite there - not invisible or translucent or whatever, but just not quite... real? I can feel that headache already starting.

Mrs. Carson cleared her throat, and glowered at Nowhere Girl over there. "Miss Noverre, if you'd please stop staring daggers at Miss Averejua and Miss Tanner, I'd like to get class started."


"The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed."

A few closely related Micro-Scenes from the old forum that I found in my files earlier. Thought I'd share them again.


Domoviye replied the topic: The Micro-Scenes thread
Hank looked down from the third floor of Crystal Hall as his brother Jay stomped over to the underdogs table. From the looks on the Underdogs faces, it didn’t seem like Jay would be a member for very long.

“So Hank, I still haven’t been able to figure it out and Jade only bursts out laughing when I ask,” Bunny said, “what exactly are your brothers powers?”

Hank broke into a grin. “You know those pretty flowers that have been appearing all over campus?”

“No way!”

Somehow his grin got bigger. “Every time he walks if he doesn’t control himself they pop up around him. Ayla is doing his best to make Blossom his code name.”

Bunny couldn’t help herself she burst out laughing, earning a look of displeasure from Jay far below, which only made her laugh louder.

4 years 8 months ago - 4 years 8 months ago #387
Phoenix Spiritus replied the topic: The Micro-Scenes thread

“So how’s Blossom doing?” Ayla asked with a smirk.

“I would have thought that was blooming obvious!” Fey got in the first strike.

“It certainly doesn’t seem as though he finds Whateley a bed of roses!” Chaka rose to the occasion.

“Yeah, far from flowering, his friendships seem to be shrivelling up!” Jade inevitably got in on the act too.

“You’re not going to stop them teasing your brother?” Charge asked Hank shocked.

“Not even Lily will defend my brother,” Hank replied unperturbed as he continued eating, totally ignoring Nikki, Tony and Jade.

“Lily won’t?” Charge asked stunned.

“I won’t what?” Lily demanded sitting down next to Hank.

“Defend Jay?”

“The only thing smelling of roses with him is the flowers he manifests, and I’m not sure it’s a mutant power either,” she muttered. “Just a rich soil of garbage and muck he carries around instead of a soul!”

“Gee Lily, tell us what you really think!” Chaka laughed at Lily’s disgusted outburst. “Don’t hold back, we’re all friends here!”

years 8 months ago #388
Valentine replied the topic: The Micro-Scenes thread

Ayla looked over at Hank, “What’s gotten ‘Blossom’ so pissed now?”

“Besides you buying the Powerpuff Girls so he could use that name?” Jade slipped in.

Hank snickered, then said soberly, “Kody and ‘Lanie asked him to be their Flower Girl, er Boy.”
Don’t Drick and Drive.

4 years 8 months ago #389
Domoviye replied the topic: The Micro-Scenes thread
Hank looked at the path to Crystal Hall that was covered in the pretty rose like flowers his brother created unintentionally. Unlike the usual patches of flowers the entire path was a river of purple.

“What happened here?” He asked Jade.

“Well, you know how Tink likes purple?” Jade asked in return.

“Yeah,” he said starting to smile.

“She asked me about your brother because he didn’t take her asking him for some flowers very nicely.”

“Oh no,” Hank said feeling a little glimmer of sympathy for his sibling. “You told her what a poopy head he is?”

“Yeah. She took it pretty well.”

The path of flowers expanded into a lake, the fragrance was almost enough to make his eyes water. “And how did she make all of this happen?”

“I told her if Jay didn’t concentrate he’d make flowers everytime he moved. She started giggling and rubbing her hands at that point.”

Hank winced in sympathy knowing what Tink was capable of.

“It wasn’t too bad at first, but then Jay did something really stupid. Even for him.”

“What?”

They came around Schuster Hall and Hank stopped dead as a sea of flowers appeared before them. Mounds of flowers formed hills ten and even fifteen feet high. Students and teachers could be heard yelling for help. Security was trying to cut their way into the mess unsuccessfully. And very faintly Hank heard his brother sobbing, as a high pitched voice sang “I love you, you love me, we’re one big happy family.”

“Your brother called Tink a freak of nature that shouldnt exist and he was going to rip her wings off if she didn’t go away.”

“Oh god.”

“Yeah,” Jade said, “that was three hours ago. She hasn’t stopped singing or hugging, or dancing with her ‘specialest friend in the whole wide world’ since.”

[Domoviye replied the topic: The Micro-Scenes thread
“Hank, we need your help,” a freshman poesie said looking nervously into the sophomore common room.

“Me? Why?” Hank asked getting out of the new hammock Ayla had bought and team Kimba had organized.

“It’s your sister Blossom, she won’t come out of her room.”

Hank sat right back down. “Can’t help you, sorry. I’d just make it worse.”

“Sister?” Riptide asked.

“Blossom?” Jade asked giggling.

Hank answered Rip first. “Turns out my brother Jay is an exemplar, a level 1, maybe a weak 2. After he got beat up by those bullies for all of his flowers, she had to be healed and he lost something very precious to her. They moved her here last night. And after I talked with my parents yesterday, explaining that Jay was already being called Blossom, it was decided that it would be easiest to make that her new name.”

“Is she a pretty girl?” Fey asked evilly.

“Beautiful rose coloured skin, hair like dark red rose petals, willowy with just enough curves to make her interesting, and she smells like a garden,” the freshman answered. “A lot of girls are interested in her.” From the predatory smile on her face, the freshman was already fantasizing about Blossom.

Jade jumped out of her chair. “Come on! It looks like we have a job to do cheering Blossom up! And we can give her a complete makeover!”

Hank sat in his hammock for a moment as Jade took off. Finally he got up, heading for the door. “This I have to see.”

Team Kimba and friends didn’t quite run down the stairs. As sophomores they had an image to uphold, but in less than 30 seconds the room was empty.

(Contains mild spoilers for Best of Show 3 . If you haven't read it yet, sorry?)

Kane Hall
Daniel shook his head as he looked at the entrance to the office. Before going to Kardonia, he never would have expected to find himself in this particular situation. Much less twice since getting back to Whateley. Even so, there were things to do that must be done. With a sigh, he pushed the door open.

Seated behind the desk was Officer Canterbury, reading over some paperwork. As Donut approached, she spoke up. "How can I help you?"

Daniel flushed a little. "I was speaking with Mizz Maguire after class, and apparently I have a couple things that I need to register as weapons." She looked him up and down, before shrugging and handing over a clipboard. The reaction made Daniel think this was just and every day occurrence. Of course, given that this was Whateley, it probably was. After accepting the clipboard, he took a seat and worked his way through the questions. Eventually, he stood up and returned the clipboard to the waiting officer. She gave the paper a quick once-over, blinked, then re-read the document at a slower pace. After setting the clipboard down, she took a moment to think before staring at Daniel. "If you'll pardon my asking, what exactly is Ground Cave Troll?"

"It's a spice. Type of pepper actually. Makes a ghost pepper seem mild in comparison."

"And you have a jar of it, why?"

"Christmas gift from Carol the Ancient Yuletide Troll. Got it when I was in Kardonia. Mizz Maguire told me she'd make me a better containment vessel the next time she's in devisor mode."

Officer Canterbury just nodded slowly at the explanation. "I see. And what makes a manifested desert so dangerous?"

"I made it with a quarter teaspoon of the ground cave troll. Tastes wonderful, until the heat of the cave troll knocks you out."

The security officer barely resisted the urge to facepalm.