fandomtownies | The Preserve; Wednesday Afternoon

Current Mood: stressed

Entry tags:

The Preserve; Wednesday Afternoon

Travis was stuck in a tree.

There was a reason for that, he swore! It went like this: he'd been dumb and gone out to skateboard early in the afternoon. The boardwalk had seemed like the best possible place but as soon as he'd gotten as far the deck, the eels had attacked.

So, Travis had run. And he'd run fast. The eels had hit him in the back but had thankfully not attached and he'd been able to use his skateboard as a weapon, smacking and slapping eels down if they got too close. The constant shrieking was making his head hurt and he'd headed for the trees in the hopes that the eels wouldn't come after him.

Well, they had until he'd scurried up a tree and started batting at each approaching eel with his skateboard. The constant barrage made it difficult to actually get down though.

So, that was the story. He was perched on a branch, back against the trunk and smacking shrieking, flying eels with a now dirty skateboard. God, he hoped this stopped at some point. He didn't want to sleep in a tree.

[Open place in town, ofc. I just wanted to stick someone in a tree]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Kathy was too pumped to go back to the dorms and safety after class got out, so she decided that patrolling was just the thing to do. Maybe she'd find some sign of whoever had sent the eels with jetpacks after the island?

In all honesty, though, she didn't really care whether she did or not. She was just having a good time.

...Yeah, Kathy's priorities might need to be examined. But that was for later. Now was for eel-hunting.

She didn't even pause to wonder why there were a cluster of eels swarming around a tree. She was too busy flinging herself into the middle of it with a well-placed spin kick. Several eels went crashing to the ground and Kathy grabbed for a tree branch to help pull herself into posi-- "Ahh!"

There was another kid in the tree!

"Holy crap!" Travis yelped, bracing himself against a branch when it suddenly started to shake. "Careful, careful! I'm gonna fall!"

"Whoa, hey! Hold on!" Kathy let go of his branch, landing in a couch on another a few feet below. She wobbled on it for a moment before catching her balance and very slowly stood up.

Thank you crazy super-agility powers. You were the very best and Kathy loved you lots and lots.

"You okay?" she asked, looking up at him. She tensed, in case he was going to make good on that threat and fall out of the tree.

"As long as there's no sudden earthquakes or no one shakes the tree, I'll be fine," Travis said, letting out a breath and relaxing the grip on his skateboard. "I'm good."

"You sure you don't need a hand--hang on a sec!"

The eels were getting frisky again. Kathy lightly ran along her branch, out to the very end, and swung her ribbons, slamming the reinforced handles into the contraptions the eels wore on their backs. The ones with broken machinery fell, screaming all the while. The ones that she'd hit dead on also fell, but with less screaming.

She darted back towards the trunk, then climbed up a few more branches until she was closer to the one Travis had claimed. "If you wanna head back for the dorms, I can cover you?"

"Uh, I dunno," he said, glancing down and making a face. "I think I might just make this my new home. It's pretty comfortable and lots of fresh air."

He was joking. Kind of.

"Good covering if there's rain or snow and only really gotta worry about lightning. I could do worse."

"I dunno," Kathy teased, looking around. "No real wifi signal out here. And no where to plug in my phone. Plus, I'm a California girl. Once it hits fifty degrees, it's officially too cold to contemplate being outside for an extended period of time."

She smiled up at him. "I'm Kathy, by the way. You know, if we're gonna be tree-buddies for a little bit."

"Travis," he said, nodding. "And I'm from the midwest so cold doesn't really bother me. I'll just grow a beard or something and use leaves for warmth."

"I think I'm a little short on the ability to grow a decent beard, even if I were inclined to join you in your quest for hermitude," Kathy said. Which she most definitely was not. "I don't think I'm cut out for living in a tree, sadly. Or anywhere without heating and central air."

"Oh, come on, where's your sense of adventure?" Travis asked, smacking down at an eel with his skateboard. "It'd be fun!"

No, it would not.

"It's hibernating," Kathy explained. "It'll make an appearance soon, but only to see if there will be six more weeks of winter."

"How did someone else even end up out here this far?" he wondered. "It's kind of out of the way."

"Oh me?" Kathy flushed a little bit. "I'm, umm, really fast? So I was doing a circuit of the whole island, just to see if I could find anything useful."

"That made you blush?" Travis asked, resting his skateboard against his shoulder and sounding quizzical.

"I mean, I run really, really fast," Kathy said, ducking her head. "Like...keeping up with cars, fast. But I always feel like I'm bragging when I say stuff like that."

[This past week has been hell on my schedule, sorry! I'll understand if you'd rather drop this thread, just wanted to respond!]

Edited 2015-01-29 14:57 (UTC)

"Keeping up with cars fast?" Travis repeated, raising an eyebrow. "Why can't I have cool things like that happen to me?"

He just got to die and have his head sewed on someone else's body. Totally creepy.

"If it helps, I don't know why it happened to me," Kathy shrugged. "It's like something out of Y-People. Over the course of a few months, I got really fast, really agile, and really, uhh, bouncy."

Which obviously led to her putting on rainbows and a pseudonym to go fight crime in the streets of Baltimore. Because why wouldn't it?

"Thanks for not thinking it's weird or anything."

"Nothing's weird around here and I've got my own side of weird too," he told her, shrugging. "It's probably pretty helpful. Means you don't get stuck in trees with a skateboard as weapon."

"Nope!" Kathy agreed. "I use gymnastics ribbons instead."

It made more sense than it sounded. At least, sorta.

"Those can be weapons?" he asked, sounding curious.

"They can if you fill the handles with metal and send 'em flying at things," Kathy said, standing back up on her branch. It bobbed under her weight, but she barely seemed to notice. Wrapping the reinforced ribbon around her hand, she darted forward and let the handle fly out, slamming into one of the eels. The eel fell and she yanked back, the handle sailing into her palm with a resounding smack. "See what I mean?" she said, turning to look at Travis with a smile.

"Huh." Travis blinked and glanced at his skateboard. "Makes me think I picked the wrong kind of weapon for today. Probably would have done better with anything but a skateboard."

"I wouldn't say that. I mean, you're still in your tree and in one piece," Kathy pointed out. "Pretty sure most of that blood isn't yours. So I'd say you're doing all right for yourself."

"I don't think any of its mine," he said, pulling up one sleeve and checking himself out. "I've got more eel guts on me then anything."

He sniffed his collar.

"I need a shower."

"Yeah, that's pretty much true of anyone who went out in this," Kathy agreed. "I'm so glad I'm not wearing my gi today, let me tell you."

She would never get it clean again. Never.

"Shall we make a break for the dorms, you think?"

Even though Travis was pretty loathe to come out of the tree since that meant facing eels again, he figured he couldn't really avoid it.

"Ugh, I was hoping to wait these things out but I guess that's a pretty chicken move," he admitted.

"I think the bigger thing to worry about is how long these guys are gonna stay," Kathy said. "Staying up here wouldn't be a bad move overall, but I'm pretty sure these things are gonna keep coming till well after dark. And even if you wanted to keep fighting them off when it's too dark to see, the idea of sleeping in a tree doesn't sound all that comfortable, you know?"

"I've slept worse places." Not really. He sighed and hitched his skateboard up on his shoulder. "Okay. Okay, let's go. I'm just gonna run and not look back."

"I'll keep them off your back," Kathy promised. "You just break for the dorms and don't worry about anything else."

One benefit of being a human superball? You made for great bait, especially for things as stupid as these eels were.

Travis nodded and then took a breath.

"Thanks for your help," he said and slithered his way out of the tree and onto the ground. As soon as he hit the ground, he took off at a dead run, skateboard banging against his shoulder as he ran.

Kathy took a much shorter and direct route--she leapt off her branch and dove into the nearest pack (school?) of eels. They managed to break her fall enough that her landing was controlled; a handspring and a somersault later and she was back on her feet.

She blitzed past Travis, running until she was out of sight before dashing back and calling, "Mostly clear ahead!" as she sped past him towards the eels that had clustered by the tree. They'd mostly recovered from her unexpected attack and were preparing to give chase when she was back among them, rainbows flashing as her modified ribbons cut through the air.

Travis really wasn't going to be chatting while he ran. He was out of breath and just wanted to get to the dorms so he apologized for not talking.

He ducked an eel, swung at another one and jumped a whole bunch of dead ones before he saw the front of the dorms.

He stumbled up a few stairs and kept running.

By the time he hit the stairs, Kathy was at his heels, picking out eel guts from her hair. Ew. That was an image that would linger.

Once inside, she sagged against the door, ignoring the sound of eels divebombing the walls outside.

"All good?" she asked, flashing him a V-for-Victory sign. "I tried to keep you in sight for most of the run."

"I'm good," he panted, bending over and sucking air. "Just tired. Tired and smelly. God, I smell."

Travis made a face.

"I should shower. Thanks, though."

"I'm so gonna be right behind you," Kathy said, wiping her fingers on her jeans. "Well, I mean, not right behind you. Literally. More like, also taking a shower, but in the girls' room. Not that you didn't realize that. I'm shutting up now."

By the way, Travis, had Kathy mentioned she was awkward when not balancing on a tree branch and flailing away at flying eels? Cause she was.

Travis stopped at the explanation and then snickered when he realized he probably would have done the exact same thing if he'd been the one talking.

"S'okay," he told her, smiling. "You're not alone in being completely hopeless when it comes to talking. I get it. You don't need to shut up. I owe you one."

"You don't owe me anything," Kathy said earnestly--in no small part because it meant she wasn't still explaining to him that she didn't think they'd be showering together. "I'm glad I was able to give you a hand. Not every day I get to show off my fancy moves to a cute guy in a tree, you know? Even if I did end it with guts in my hair."

"Cute guy?" Well, he was the guy part of that description so of course he was going to pick up on that. "Thanks. You're -- cute too."

See, that stammering meant he could be awkward too.

They could be stammering idiots together, woo!

"Really? Umm, thanks." She was blushing and looking down again. "I mean, umm, you should see me without bits of eel in my...everywhere."

Congrats, Travis! You have now seen the full extent of Kathy's game.

"Maybe I should," he said since it just seemed like the logical, natural thing to say. He blushed a bit and covered that by trying to brush some eel off his shirt. "Thank you, again. For helping me get out of the tree."

Why weren't there mandatory lessons in flirting, or, at least, mandatory lessons in how not to stand around like a doofus? Kathy would pay actual money for the ability to do that. It would be such a nice change from her whole life, really.

"Not a problem," she said. "I'd hate to think of you still stuck out there!"

It was cold and getting dark! Definitely not appropriate tree-hugging weather.

"And I can't even hold 'covered in eel-gunk' against you, cause I've been like this since the end of class. So no worries, okay?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Preserve; Wednesday Afternoon

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject