When you're kitten-sized, the greenhouse really does feel like a deep, dense jungle. All the plants loom massive, and their careful spacing within their large beds makes for a convenient path through all that green. What sunlight does filter through the leaves is hazy from passing through the greenhouse's foggy windows. Outside may be cold, but in here it's warm, cozy. Zero Sugar Pepsi sits low, pounce-ready, in the middle of a large plot of soil, surrounded by Wandering Willows who are starting to get a little restless. The little saplings sway and shift, occasionally getting up to move here or there, ostensibly to find a more comfortable spot in the dirt. Or maybe just trying to put distances between themselves and the Blob on their left.
At the end of the bed, past the little beads of fertilizer, past the tiny lawn gnome someone stuck into the earth, Tansy Treetops crouches over a particularly toothy sprout of snapping dragons. Spade in gloved hand, she carefully repots the fussy flowers, humming to herself, a pretty, improvised tune, oblivious to the tiny hunter lurking just beyond her willows.
Pepsi's eyes aren't on Ms. Treetops, though, they're focused just beyond. High up on a table sit five cacti in colorful pots. Two blue, one gray, one red and one green. The two blue pot cacti seem like they could be as tall as Ms. Treetops, herself, while the gray one and the green one look awful small to Pepsi’s eye. That red one, though. That guy’s just right.
The little cactus kitten does some complex math it probably isn't ready for, then bounds forward. A full sprint, running for those cactuses. At the lip of the bed, she leaps, tiny paws spread out and reaching for that table that seemed so much closer a moment ago.
In the corner of Pepsi's eye something moves. A vine, and not one that belongs. She freezes in mid-air. The vine does, too. Everything freezes.
Wyatt is new to this memory thing, so he gawks all around. They're so small. And there's Pepsi, the same size as they are. He can't help it. "Awww! Look!" he coos, pointing at the kitten frozen in mid-air.
Well, this explains why Eddy had failed to entice Pepsi with his small desk cacti. His head swivels far more than necessary as he compensates for the blow he'd taken not long ago. But it's hard to be too overly serious and moody when his brother is here, freshly rescued. "Pretty damn cute," he admits.
"So how's this work?" Wyatt asks. He was afraid when he woke up to discover he had been taken, and aware that he'd been somewhere bad, that something was... feeding on him? But this doesn't seem so scary, now.
"Oh, hm," Winter says, gawking straight up at familiar plants, now alien because of their size. Several emotions cycle over her features in rapid succession as she twists her neck this way and that trying to take everything in, the expressions too subtle and too quick moving to be easily definable from a glance. "Gotta find the important item in the memory, sets the p-person...or cat free."
Her lips part slightly when she spies Ms. Treetops bent over her garden, and then, Pepsi, the indefatigable troublemaker, stock still with her little paws outstretched. Winter takes a few cautious steps forward, mindful that any one of these plants could be the wrong type, but knowing that those cacti are where the four of them need to get. "Tell yinz a s-secret?" she asks, then goes on without pause, "Ms. Treetops loves that little green cat."
"Who wouldn't?" Wyatt asks, sounding slightly offended at the implication that there's any other alternative. He sticks close by the others, but that doesn't stop him from reaching out to scratch Pepsi's chin. It's easier to avoid her thorns at this size, anyway, not that they ever stopped him before.
"I don't," Presley says, just to be contrary. Zero Sugar Pepsi is step up from a muscheron, but he's had his fill of stepping into whimsically giant-size memories to save cute pests. "Not everyone likes kittens. Or cactuses."
It's unclear from his tone if kittens or cactuses have done more to earn Presley's ire. He looks around, frowning as he eyes the flowers Ms. Treetops is handling. Beautiful, their subtle veins standing out, but too heavy to grab. "Whatever it is we have to carry out of here, it's going to need more than two hands."
"Makes booze," Eddy offers in Pepsi's defense. Or, she tries to. He's yet to actually see evidence of any successful brewing. Still, this raises her quite a bit in his estimation as far as both kittens and cactuses go.
This is also not his first rodeo being whimsically sized, and it seems that rescuing the furry (slash spiky) community of Elflock Falls is something that fate has called on him to do. (Or he just has really coincidental luck when it comes to finding seeds.)
With his vision still bothering him, he hangs close to Winter. Could be something that needs looked into. "Sometimes you gotta eat it," Eddy adds helpfully, thinking back on a lot of memory pudding.
Winter's eyes widen, two blue saucers, as she watches Wyatt chomp on a leaf. She almost lets him eat it, but then...
"That's not for people," she says, flat, reaching to grab it out of his mouth like he's a disobedient puppy. As she works, she goes on, nodding her head toward that far table across the gap. "Bet it's one of the cacti."
Presley watches this scene with his arms crossed. "Sometimes you just have to let him do it and learn on his own," he comments.
But with Winter handling the Webberley Problem, Presley starts walking towards the cacti pots. He glances at Eddy as he goes past the others. "You alright there, Waxweiler?" He sounds... sincere, or at least as sincere as Presley is capable of sounding.
Eddy blinks his eyes like he's trying to flush something out of them, and it seems to be doing some good. "Yeah. Fine," he answers, a little surprised by the ?concern?. It's mostly true now, at least. The extremely helpful explanation he offers is, "Thing earlier."
He also makes no move to stop Wyatt or argue with Presley's advice. This was a wholly predictable outcome, and he really only has himself to blame.
"Gotta be something she'd wanna eat," he clarifies, belatedly.
Wyatt allows himself to be divested of his snack without complaint, as if
he's pretty used to this. It didn't taste very good, anyway. "Okay, so
let's get to the cactuses," he announces cheerfully. He gives Pepsi one
last pat on her oversized head, then sets off toward those prickly plants.
"Someone should get her a cute collar," he muses.
Winter drops the leaf and wipes her hand off on her dress, wrinkling her nose in distaste. Blech.
"Easier said than done," she says, following behind the lot of them finally, still scanning the area as she moves, half in wonder, half out of paranoia. "Maybe...Climb up on Pepsi, then hop across Ms. Treetops back to get up on the table?" A pause. "Going to get Pouch to find me a b-broom when we get out of here."
Presley makes a face. Even saving the school and everyone in it will not be enough to get him on a broom. "Already bad enough we have to scale the evil tree," Presley mutters. He scans their surroundings, looking for alternate routes, but... Winter's right. The table is too tall. At minimum, they'll have to use Ms. Treetops' frozen body as leverage.
He looks back at Zero Sugar Pepsi. "If we're doing this, we should be careful." A giant cactus kitten is still a cactus. He walks around Pepsi, looking for the least spiky spot to start with.
Just as the students start to examine Pepsi for the safest spot to climb, the little tiger starts moving again.
Behind them, the Wandering Willows all leap from their beds, the Blob deflates with a flatulent sound. It's chaos. Utter bedlam, trying not to get trampled.
In the air, Zero Sugar Pepsi twists, a teeny tiny John Wick in her own action movie. What had caught her attention was not Ms. Treetops, but something reaching for the Herbology teacher — a strange vine tipped in a tiny purple flower. Pepsi intercepts the vine with her little claws outstretched, pulling the vine off course and along with her.
Whether she knows what she was doing, or just saw an irresistible toy, the spiny kitten rescues Ms. Treetops from that strange creeping vine. Tansy turns at the sound, leaving her snapping dragons behind to carefully separate the cactus kitten from the invasive plant.
"Oh, what a hero," she murmurs, warm and affectionate as she scoops the kitten up into one arm. "You don't like these either, hmm? Don't touch them. They're bad for you."
With her free hand, Tansy Treetops produces a gnarled wand from somewhere at her hip, and she carefully blasts the vine with ice until it isn't moving any more.
In the commotion, an empty terracotta pot rolls off the table and lands sideways on the ground, the mouth of the toppled pot a long tunnel back to Peckenpaugh's ruined auditorium.
[REPLY REQUIREMENT MET! You may continue to thread in this scene and acquire the linchpin or leave at this time.]
Still wandless, Winter can do little but dance out of the way of the Wandering Willows, trying to steer the boys out of their path as well. Darting this way and that, ducking stray branches, even once it's all gone still again she looks unsettled, rodentish.
"Everyone okay?" she asks, squinting one eye shut. Her gaze cuts across the gap, back to the table. "Guess we could maybe use Ms. Treetops as a stair, still?"
Shit fuck. It's like a trap being sprung whenever these memories start sputtering back on again. Eddy doesn't love the idea of scaling one of their teachers, but "guess she won't remember" he reassures himself aloud as he surveys the route. (Right? Right?)
Talking is something Eddy is very bad at, but climbing? That comes as naturally as breathing. Trying to find the least invasive route (look, he doesn't want to touch her butt), he jumps and catches hold of the crook of her elbow, low enough with her crouching still, and pulls himself up. Then he crouches himself and extends an arm to aid whoever's next. "Going up?"
"I'm going wherever you're going," Wyatt answers, grasping Eddy's hand and following him up. He also doesn't want to touch her butt or anything. Even in a memory, that seems wrong. "Alley-oop!" he says, scrambling up onto her shoulder.
"This is absolutely not what I signed up for when I enrolled into Peckenpaugh," Presley complains, but he's moving as soon as the other boys make room, pulling himself up after them with ease. Who knew that cheerleading would be more useful than Potions in his life?
Once stable (on Ms. Treetops' giant immobile body, just don't think too hard about it), Presley leads down and holds a hand out to Winter. "I don't suppose anyone has an idea on how we're going to get that cactus down once we climb up there?"
"This'll give you a leg up in the aurors' small crimes division," Winter deadpans, wearing a half-smile, taking Presley's hand after a moment of hesitation. She's not even sure if that's an actual division, but she's proud of her pun, regardless.
She is about as graceful a climber as you would expect. Quick to get up once pulled, but utterly heedless of how her skirt flips and folds. Thank god for a petticoat. Once she's up with the rest of them, she smooths out her dress, clears her throat, and offers, "Roll it down Ms. Treetops' back?"
She scrambles up Tansy's frozen arm, clinging to the teacher's sleeve to reach her shoulder.
"Pushing things off ledges works real well too," Eddy suggests as he continues to scale Ms. Treetops, her hair making for a convenient set of ropes. He's recently come to appreciate the fuck-this-shit lifestyle of being a feline.
Presley smirks. "I'm willing to try it, but I take no responsibility for whatever permanent mental damage the cat suffers from us breaking her linchpin." He hangs in the back, checking around the greenhouse again, just in case, and follows the others across their teacher's back.
"End of the world finally has you embracing a little ch-chaos, hm?" Winter asks with a faint smirk. She looks up at the greenhouse, happy to see it whole again, everything healthy and happy, not covered in weeds or frost. Even if it's only for a little while. "I think Eddy's got it. Pepsi would appreciate the gesture, frankly."
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peckenpaugh2020-06-01 11:18 am
MEMORY: Little Hunter
[CRITERIA: Minimum 9 Tags]
When you're kitten-sized, the greenhouse really does feel like a deep, dense jungle. All the plants loom massive, and their careful spacing within their large beds makes for a convenient path through all that green. What sunlight does filter through the leaves is hazy from passing through the greenhouse's foggy windows. Outside may be cold, but in here it's warm, cozy. Zero Sugar Pepsi sits low, pounce-ready, in the middle of a large plot of soil, surrounded by Wandering Willows who are starting to get a little restless. The little saplings sway and shift, occasionally getting up to move here or there, ostensibly to find a more comfortable spot in the dirt. Or maybe just trying to put distances between themselves and the Blob on their left.
At the end of the bed, past the little beads of fertilizer, past the tiny lawn gnome someone stuck into the earth, Tansy Treetops crouches over a particularly toothy sprout of snapping dragons. Spade in gloved hand, she carefully repots the fussy flowers, humming to herself, a pretty, improvised tune, oblivious to the tiny hunter lurking just beyond her willows.
Pepsi's eyes aren't on Ms. Treetops, though, they're focused just beyond. High up on a table sit five cacti in colorful pots. Two blue, one gray, one red and one green. The two blue pot cacti seem like they could be as tall as Ms. Treetops, herself, while the gray one and the green one look awful small to Pepsi’s eye. That red one, though. That guy’s just right.
The little cactus kitten does some complex math it probably isn't ready for, then bounds forward. A full sprint, running for those cactuses. At the lip of the bed, she leaps, tiny paws spread out and reaching for that table that seemed so much closer a moment ago.
In the corner of Pepsi's eye something moves. A vine, and not one that belongs. She freezes in mid-air. The vine does, too. Everything freezes.
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
Her lips part slightly when she spies Ms. Treetops bent over her garden, and then, Pepsi, the indefatigable troublemaker, stock still with her little paws outstretched. Winter takes a few cautious steps forward, mindful that any one of these plants could be the wrong type, but knowing that those cacti are where the four of them need to get. "Tell yinz a s-secret?" she asks, then goes on without pause, "Ms. Treetops loves that little green cat."
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
It's unclear from his tone if kittens or cactuses have done more to earn Presley's ire. He looks around, frowning as he eyes the flowers Ms. Treetops is handling. Beautiful, their subtle veins standing out, but too heavy to grab. "Whatever it is we have to carry out of here, it's going to need more than two hands."
MEMORY: Little Hunter
This is also not his first rodeo being whimsically sized, and it seems that rescuing the furry (slash spiky) community of Elflock Falls is something that fate has called on him to do. (Or he just has really coincidental luck when it comes to finding seeds.)
With his vision still bothering him, he hangs close to Winter. Could be something that needs looked into. "Sometimes you gotta eat it," Eddy adds helpfully, thinking back on a lot of memory pudding.
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
"That's not for people," she says, flat, reaching to grab it out of his mouth like he's a disobedient puppy. As she works, she goes on, nodding her head toward that far table across the gap. "Bet it's one of the cacti."
MEMORY: Little Hunter
But with Winter handling the Webberley Problem, Presley starts walking towards the cacti pots. He glances at Eddy as he goes past the others. "You alright there, Waxweiler?" He sounds... sincere, or at least as sincere as Presley is capable of sounding.
MEMORY: Little Hunter
He also makes no move to stop Wyatt or argue with Presley's advice. This was a wholly predictable outcome, and he really only has himself to blame.
"Gotta be something she'd wanna eat," he clarifies, belatedly.
Re: MEMORY: Little Hunter
Wyatt allows himself to be divested of his snack without complaint, as if he's pretty used to this. It didn't taste very good, anyway. "Okay, so let's get to the cactuses," he announces cheerfully. He gives Pepsi one last pat on her oversized head, then sets off toward those prickly plants. "Someone should get her a cute collar," he muses.
MEMORY: Little Hunter
"Easier said than done," she says, following behind the lot of them finally, still scanning the area as she moves, half in wonder, half out of paranoia. "Maybe...Climb up on Pepsi, then hop across Ms. Treetops back to get up on the table?" A pause. "Going to get Pouch to find me a b-broom when we get out of here."
MEMORY: Little Hunter
He looks back at Zero Sugar Pepsi. "If we're doing this, we should be careful." A giant cactus kitten is still a cactus. He walks around Pepsi, looking for the least spiky spot to start with.
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
Behind them, the Wandering Willows all leap from their beds, the Blob deflates with a flatulent sound. It's chaos. Utter bedlam, trying not to get trampled.
In the air, Zero Sugar Pepsi twists, a teeny tiny John Wick in her own action movie. What had caught her attention was not Ms. Treetops, but something reaching for the Herbology teacher — a strange vine tipped in a tiny purple flower. Pepsi intercepts the vine with her little claws outstretched, pulling the vine off course and along with her.
Whether she knows what she was doing, or just saw an irresistible toy, the spiny kitten rescues Ms. Treetops from that strange creeping vine. Tansy turns at the sound, leaving her snapping dragons behind to carefully separate the cactus kitten from the invasive plant.
"Oh, what a hero," she murmurs, warm and affectionate as she scoops the kitten up into one arm. "You don't like these either, hmm? Don't touch them. They're bad for you."
With her free hand, Tansy Treetops produces a gnarled wand from somewhere at her hip, and she carefully blasts the vine with ice until it isn't moving any more.
In the commotion, an empty terracotta pot rolls off the table and lands sideways on the ground, the mouth of the toppled pot a long tunnel back to Peckenpaugh's
ruined auditorium.
[REPLY REQUIREMENT MET! You may continue to thread in this scene and acquire the linchpin or leave at this time.]
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
"Everyone okay?" she asks, squinting one eye shut. Her gaze cuts across the gap, back to the table. "Guess we could maybe use Ms. Treetops as a stair, still?"
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
Talking is something Eddy is very bad at, but climbing? That comes as naturally as breathing. Trying to find the least invasive route (look, he doesn't want to touch her butt), he jumps and catches hold of the crook of her elbow, low enough with her crouching still, and pulls himself up. Then he crouches himself and extends an arm to aid whoever's next. "Going up?"
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
Once stable (on Ms. Treetops' giant immobile body, just don't think too hard about it), Presley leads down and holds a hand out to Winter. "I don't suppose anyone has an idea on how we're going to get that cactus down once we climb up there?"
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
She is about as graceful a climber as you would expect. Quick to get up once pulled, but utterly heedless of how her skirt flips and folds. Thank god for a petticoat. Once she's up with the rest of them, she smooths out her dress, clears her throat, and offers, "Roll it down Ms. Treetops' back?"
She scrambles up Tansy's frozen arm, clinging to the teacher's sleeve to reach her shoulder.
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
Toppling the cactus it is, then.