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Plants are the Worst

WHO: Dustin and you!
WHERE: Somewhere in the northeastern quadrant of Temba and the Hangar.
WHAT: Dustin does not take plants seriously until they make him. Later, he tries to talk to some mushrooms.
WHEN: Where the Wild Things Grow event, August 11th - September 8th.
WARNINGS: Someone needs to wash this boy's mouth out with soap and make him go to his room.

1. Northeastern Temba [OTA]

Dustin had plans. Key word, 'had.' He'd come back from Eorzea with a wealth of new tools, unique chemicals, some potions - hell, even some clothes that were more tolerable in the heat and actually seemed to fit him! It's more of a haul than he was expecting and it leaves him returning to the ship genuinely optimistic about his projects back on Agra-10.

...Well, okay, most of those warm-and-fuzzy feelings end up being constructs of the Agrii and their incredibly effective compulsion abilities, but even after Dustin comes to this realization he finds that they're not totally foreign. For the first time in several years, he has a place that he wants to go back to and improve.

That feeling is what he's trying to focus on now.

It's hours later, back on the surface of Agra-10, Temba. What should have been the road south from the hangar. What it is instead is a miserable slog through too-tall grass and prickly bushes encroaching on just a bare sliver of exposed, cracked asphalt that winds through towering trees blotting out the summer sun, forcing him on a winding route with no static landmarks to speak of. The leatherworking knife he brought back along with his crafter's gloves help him slice through the more onerous vegetation in his way, but it's like he's brought a pocket knife to the heart of the Amazon. The walk is slow, hard, and annoying.

Maybe I can mix up something more effective back at the shop, Dustin considers, grimacing as he pushes aside a blanket of vines dangling in his face. Some of them are as thick as his arm - twitching like one, too. He has to step carefully over their piled-up and tangled mass in the middle of the road. There were a few reagents that had endothermic reactions with each other. If I can isolate the most efficient ingredients and find a way to amplify the cooling effect, maybe I could freeze out some of these irritating plant fuckers from the roots. That'll show 'em.

Something moves next to his ankle. Dustin glances down, just in time to see one of the vines suddenly start to tighten around his leg. He gasps in surprise and hops out of the way--

--Only to feel his feet drop out from underneath him as a mesh of thin roots masquerading as solid ground gives way. This was likely a natural depression made from rubble blocking the road that he just didn't notice under all of the plant cover. Interesting, he thinks, numbly, just before landing in a heap on the leaf-littered dirt at the bottom. The fall isn't far enough to injure him, but the shock and impact still leave him dazed for several seconds.

Then, Dustin looks up. The roots are growing back.

"--H-Hey! Hey!" he yelps in panic, stumbling upright on unsteady legs to scrabble at the edges of the pit. It's about eight feet deep and the sides (or at least, the side he's currently clawing at) are too crumbly to get a good grip with his fingers. "Wait! Fuck!"

2. Temba Hangar [OTA]

Several days later, Dustin returns to the hangar feeling a lot more prepared than when he left it. Not only was he able to make it back to his shop (eventually) and find it relatively unscathed from the storm, but also he has done something he never thought he'd consent to and picked up an expertise. These little mushroom guys - Funfronds, according to the 'Dictionary' - clearly have some kind of negative effect on the overactive plant life around them, and they're intelligent enough to be communicated with so they can discover why, potentially. Dustin feels confident he could have picked up their language with enough patient observation and time, however he is finding himself woefully lacking in both time and patience at the moment. Desperate measures must be taken.

So here he is, sweaty and exhausted from yet another long walk through the aggressive forest, back to where he remembers seeing the Funfronds when they disembarked the ships. There was a crack in the wall, surrounded by glowing moss...but surely he's not the only one chasing this clue here.

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Radley is walking cautiously through the mess, trying to get some idea of what can be done to get rid of it all, when he hears a voice from the ground. He pauses, listening. He definitely recognizes that voice. They got off on the wrong foot, to say the least, but he's not vindictive and he's certainly not going to just leave the poor kid stranded even though he was insulting.

He runs over to the pit in concern. The roots are growing back far too fast. He swipes at them with a machete he'd found, trying to cut them away from covering the hole at least long enough to rescue the guy.

"I have a rope!" he calls. "I'll send it down!"

He throws one end of it into the hole. "Can you reach it?"

Dealing with evil, overgrown plants was, surprisingly enough, something Lauri-Ell was very experienced with. She was, after all, Kree, and served the Alliance. It came with the territory. SO she had been doing her best to make her way through the city, intending to win her way to the Civics Center to acquire her hammer. With that no plant would stand in her way.

Of course her intentions proved to be less pressing when she heard a voice calling out in distress. She moves toward the noise and finds the place the roots are growing back over.

"That is unkind of you," she told the plants before going down on a knee to start tearing them apart. "I shall soon have you free, shouting person."

Dustin pauses in his struggling when he hears rapidly approaching footsteps. His first thought is that this might be some kind of predator taking advantage of an easy target, but he quickly throws that paranoid thought out the window when he figures out the cadence - a biped, stride suggesting someone around six feet tall. Probably humanoid, probably someone else headed south from the ships.

Rather than being relieved, though, Dustin is mortified. Needing some random asshole to come fish him out of a hole in the ground? He might just die of embarrassment. Thankfully Radley starts cutting away the roots and throws down his rope before Dustin has too long to stew in his melancholy, and potentially try and find a way not to be saved.

He recognizes the man's voice immediately. "Radley?" he calls back, his own voice cracking with surprise. Dustin was definitely not expecting the hyperventilating new guy to be coordinated enough to pull off a rescue attempt, let alone have the materials to do so. Is that a motherfucking machete?!

Whatever, questions for later. Dustin paces a quick circle underneath the dangling end of the rope. "I--I think so! Gimme a second."

A beat, as he reaches an arm over his head to gauge the remaining distance.

"--I'll need to jump for it," Dustin decides. "You should tie the other end to something - the sides are unstable, I might pull you in."

Dustin's own panicked efforts at trying to find a side of the pit that will support his weight prevent him from hearing Lauri-Ell approach until she's almost directly overhead. A snapped twig as she kneels down gets him to glance sharply upwards, just in time to catch sight of the woman's face peering back down at him before the roots grow over and block his view.

--And then are rapidly pulled up again with her bare fucking hands. Dustin instinctively backs away from the wall with a sharp breath. He shouldn't be so surprised - the roots must be quite weak to have broken under his weight and a little push - but the sheer ferocity Lauri-Ell puts into the task, combined with the calmness of her voice, sets Dustin immediately on-edge.

"R-Right!" the boy stammers, trying to put on a determined face in spite of his shot nerves and hammering heart. His eyes dart around the perimeter. "I'll, uh--I'll try to find a place I can climb up."

A beat. "The hole's bigger than it looks up top," he continues abruptly. "You might collapse the plants from underneath you if you're not careful."

"Do not worry," she says as she keeps tearing back the roots. "Once I have enough pulled back, I will haul you up."

Still, when he says that, she almost laughs.

"The hole is not so deep for me as it is for you. I am quite taller than humans."

Truly, at six and a half feet, had she fallen into it, her hands could have found the edge to haul herself up. Especially with her strength.

"Just find a place where the wall is most straight, so I do not have to lean at a weird angle for you."

"There's not a lot of options of things to tie it to," Radley says. "I don't trust a tree.... Wait, here's some kind of old pillar...."

He cuts a few vines away from it and ties the rope around it. "Okay, try that!"

Dustin does not try to argue this point with her. He's seen a picture of Lauri-Ell in the 'Dictionary' and knows that she looks quite a bit taller and more muscly than humans, but it's hard to get a sense of just how much without a reference to someone else. Glancing up at her from this angle doesn't help much, aside from the fact that her hands swiping away at the roots look about as big as his whole head. That alone is enough to convince Dustin that she's probably not overestimating her capabilities.

Instead he nods his compliance, then scuttles over to the wall of the pit that is closest to making right angles with the top and floor where he not-so-patiently waits. It occurs to him a couple seconds later that he's not sure how Lauri-Ell plans to 'haul him up.' By his arms? The back of his jacket? His hair? The thought makes him suddenly very nervous.

"So--do you want my hands, or...?"

As soon as Radley gives him the go-ahead, Dustin hops up and clutches onto the end of the rope, feet scrabbling at the sides of the pit to give him a bit of extra leverage. His new gloves do a much better job at holding on than his bare hands ever would - which is fortunate, because he needs to start climbing immediately to outpace the roots growing back, and a pair of sweaty palms would not have helped in the slightest.

Still, the boy's arms have the strength of wet pasta and he's still quite shaky from the fall. Those last couple of feet to the surface are slow going. Dustin ends up having to swipe away several exploring roots that would have otherwise grown over his head as he clambers over the edge, puffing and wheezing from the effort

"Hold your arms up, as far as you can," the woman says as she gets the roots torn up further. There he was. Now that she knew exactly where, she could circle around to where he was to better tear up roots and lift him out.

Radley stands by, watching tensely. He hopes not to have to cut vines away now, as he doesn't want to run the risk of his aim slipping and hurting Dustin. He does try to help push away those last roots. When Dustin finally makes it to the top, Radley reaches to guide him away from the pit in case any roots snake out to try to pull him back in.

"This is like a bad science-fiction movie," Radley mutters.

"They are not edible!" Comes a simple, yet very direct comment tossed Dustin's way while Wilson stalks past the waiting teenager.

Wilson is just as fed up with the situation as everyone else. Has he tried catching and eating these strange mushroom-like creatures? Of course he has. He has hunted weirder things in the Constant and at the end of the day food is food. And in his experience different types of mushrooms also came with different effects on a person's health, so there is no reason for him not to try cooking these little fiends.

Hoisted up under the arms like a toddler, then. Dustin's face colors with embarrassment from the anticipation alone. Really hope no one else is around watching this. Might never recover.

Still, he's not going to turn down help when it so readily presents itself, even if it has the potential to permanently mar his reputation. Dustin watches Lauri-Ell with keen eyes while she continues to clear away the roots closest to him. Then, when he gauges that the top of the pit is open enough for him to get out, he oh-so-tentatively reaches his arms up above his head.

Dustin allows Radley to pull him up - although 'allow' might be a strong word in this situation, since the boy weighs next to nothing and is completely boneless from exhaustion and stress - and flops onto his back, chest heaving. He squeezes his eyes shut as the inevitable subconscious berating starts. That was, what, a three-foot rope climb? With supporting wall? I'm so fucking out of shape.

There's silence for a few moments. The roots over the pit grow back but don't extend any further from where they started; seems whatever tree produced them wanted to maintain its existing root system rather than trap anyone deliberately. Those plants probably exist, too. Dustin sighs heavily, though it's masked somewhat by him continuing to catch his breath.

"Something to get used to, apparently," he eventually grumbles back.

"Aren't we supposed to fix this, not get used to it?" Radley retorts. He stays alert, tense, not convinced they won't be attacked by something that really is deliberately after them.

He sighs after a moment, not really expecting an answer to that. "Are you okay?"

Good, the hole is open enough, and he is ready. The woman lays down on her belly for additional stability then plunges her arms down toward his. Her hands reach out to grasp just above his elbows.

"Grab my arms too. It will assist me in stabilizing."

Dustin's response to hearing Wilson's voice is downright Pavlovian at this point. He whips upright from his crouch at the wall, back like a spring, eyes wide and brow set with immediate frustration. He does not want to engage the man. He doesn't even want to challenge him for leaving him behind to clean up his mess at the Alchemists' Guild. Nothing positive could come from this.

But Wilson's simple statement already makes it so Dustin has to intervene. "Fucking good," he snaps. "Last thing I need is you trying to hunt my research. You--"

A beat. Dustin's face settles into an exhausted glower.

"--You already tried, haven't you? That's how you know."

And is also probably the reason why Dustin hasn't had any luck finding the little bastards yet. Fucking typical.

The shrug Dustin receives in return is of the dismissive kind. Like the question the teenager just asked is outright ridiculous. “Of course. Caught some even.” A smaller version of his shadow hands springs forth from the ground, making a grabbing motion. “Not worth the hassle.”

What he isn’t mentioning is the little creatures fighting back.

Dustin waves off Radley's question, partially because he doesn't have the patience to be fussed over, partially because he's becoming rapidly irritated with the subject of their discussion.

"Right, sure, we'll fix this," he says, shooting Radley a glare from his spot on the ground, "Then some other weird-ass storm will roll through and we'll have to do this song and dance all over again. Fuck knows how we're supposed to fix a whole goddamn planet, and it's not like the Agrii are able to give us any real, helpful information to do it."

Dustin allows his pride to get the better of him, pausing for a couple of seconds and wincing at Lauri-Ell's grip on his arms. Then he swallows it back and grabs her.

Really not the time, he chides himself, pushing his feet into the crumbling sides of the pit - mostly to keep from getting dragged along the edge. Lauri-Ell probably doesn't need any help pulling his scrawny ass out of here. Lesson learned: Pay more attention to the plants, or else you'll have to be fished out of a hole like a kitten stuck down a well. If that's not a good enough motivator, I don't know what is.

Face meets palm. Dustin hangs there for a few seconds before dragging his hand away, scooping back his disheveled bangs with an exasperated sigh as he stares into the middle distance.

"None still with you, I take it?"

"No." The answer is cut short, almost as if the question itself has been an insult. And he has no intention of going into any details regarding his experience with these fake mushrooms.

"What do you want with them?"

Radley stares at him. "You mean all the progress that's made keeps getting tore down again and again?! There's no real way to even fix it?!"

Once he's got a grip on her, Lauri-Ell starts to haul him up. She rocks back as she does so, rolling her legs under her so she can move to a sitting position and get him higher up. And then he was free and beside her. Which led to her smiling at him.

"Are you alright? I am a medic. I can assist you if you have injuries."

Dustin could take some small, sadistic pleasure in hearing the sound of irritation and defeat in Wilson's voice, but he's far too annoyed with the man's presence in general to relish it. Much better to take advantage of whatever ground the scientist is willing to give; it's not like Dustin can make him leave, not if he's already on a mission.

...Actually, it's probably a good idea to figure out what that mission is before he relents to getting Wilson involved, isn't it? Dustin shoots him a wary glare.

"What do you want with them?" he fires back. "Your last 'experiment' with them sounds like it was a failure, and you don't seem interested in having anything to do with them anymore. So, why are you here?"

There's that panic Dustin remembers from the Bishop. His glare turns quizzical.

"Based on what I've heard? Kind of sounds that way," Dustin says, propping himself up on his elbows. His tone is neutral in spite of the topic - stating fact, rather than deliberately trying to rile the man up. "Obviously individual infrastructure sticks around as long as someone is there to maintain it, but I don't know that any one person the Agrii have kidnapped has made any tangible progress towards figuring out what the actual fuck these storms are and how to make them stop."

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Plants are the Worst

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2 - Look, it's your favorite person!

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omg

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