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The Park - Wednesday afternoon

Fenris went for a walk in the park. Strands of mistletoe vine followed him like small, spiky snakes. He glowered at it. "You're not sneaky, you know. I can hear you."

The mistletoe didn't seem to care.

"You're not even attractive like the lights were. At least those were useful as well as pretty. You're just a parasitic plant with albino berries," he commented, either unaware or uncaring of the irony of a platinum-white haired elf commenting on the white part of anything else.

"I'm not letting you decorate me," Fenris told it after another bit of walking, "I'm not a tree. Nor am I a mantle, roof-ridge, doorway, or anywhere else someone with no sense might tack you up."

The mistletoe continued not to care and also continued to follow him, slithering along the ground. More strands began to join the first few.

"Go away," Fenris growled at it, "This isn't a game of follow-my-leader!"

[Open park is open, grumpy elf is grumpy.]

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Beau also happened to be coming through the park, because it didn’t have enough crankiness going on as it was, apparently; she also happened to be plagued by persistent branches of mistletoe.

“Look. Fuck off,” she snarled at them for what sounded like the millionth time. “I don’t know what your deal is, but it’s creepy and kinda fucked up and I will light you on fire.”

Was it so hard to just do a little bit of free-running through the park? Seriously.

“Dude,” she blurted out when she spotted Fenris, and pointed at him because what were manners anyway? “That is some dope ink, man.”

Fenris wasn't much for manners. He raised an eyebrow and said, "Neither dope nor ink. Metal, in fact."

He eyed the mistletoe following Beau. "I see you have your own herd of them. What the hell do they want? And can you light them on fire?"

He lived in hope.

"Metal?" Beau's eyebrows shot up and she drawled in a tone that managed to sound twice as sarcastic as it was actually complimentary, "Dude. That is hardcore. Were you just like feeling super edgy that day or something?"

Yes. This coming from the martial artist with a truly impractical number of facial piercings.

A couple of sprigs of mistletoe came up and tried to prod at her heels. She swatted at them with her staff.

"Come on, man, let it go already!"

She rolled her eyes as she glanced at Fenris. "I dunno, dude, they sort of herded me in here? I think I might really hate this holiday thing by now. It's way too pushy."

Another sprig of mistletoe flipped up in the air and whacked her in the back of the head, sending her lurching forward a couple of steps.

"I WILL FIND A DAMN TORCH RIGHT NOW. WATCH ME."

Fenris eyed the plants creeping up on him. He calmly pulled the very large sword from his back. The metal of his skin seemed to glow, matching similar metal running the length of the blade. He swept it across the ones that were too close. It resulted in several small chunks of mistletoe creeping along the ground like inchworms but the rest pulled back to a safe distance.

"I don't remember," he answered wryly, "I suspect the only thing I was truly feeling that day was pain."

He eyed the mistletoe with distaste, "The lights only followed. This weed is being far too predatory for something without a brain."

The mistletoe advanced again. Fenris retreated a step, which brought him closer to Beau. "Cutting it doesn't seem to kill it. I don't have a striker with me, nor do I think it would leave us time to create a fire," he commented, "Don't suppose you have a knife on you?"

Honestly. Who didn't carry an absurdly large sword these days?

Beau kicked at a couple of the mistletoe sprigs, then swatted a couple more with her staff. They did not seem to be getting the hint.

“Yeah, I mean, swords aren’t really my thing?” She shrugged and twirled the staff. “I just have this. Pretty good with it, though. Doesn’t seem like it’s —“

She bashed at more mistletoe with the butt of the staff, which only resulted in it squirming along the ground in a disturbing hobbled way.

“— helping very much.”

Fenris considered the problem. "Can you sweep it into the air with your staff? If you can, I could probably chop it into some sort of parasitic-weed salad."

A beat.

"Not that I suggest we eat it."

The mistletoe never learned. It crept too close and Fenris hacked it into pieces a little more aggressively than he needed to. "Andraste's tits, what does it want!?"

Beau didn't know who Andraste was, but she snickered anyway; she could appreciate a colorful oath, okay?

"Could maybe feed it to someone you can't stand?" Don't encourage things like this, Beauregard. "I mean, it looks poisonous. But yeah, yeah, sure. I'll give it a shot."

She was reduced to fighting semi sentient plants. This was her life now. But whatever, it was something to fight.

"Heads up!" She kicked a sprig of mistletoe up into the air, then batted it toward him with her staff.

"Nobody here I dislike that much," Fenris mused, "and I can't get home, so that leaves out people I do dislike that much."

The mistletoe arced in the air. Fenris' blade moved swiftly in both a horizontal and vertical swipe, hacking the vine into three pieces.

The shortened vines began creeping toward one another. The elf frowned, "I don't like the looks of that. Are they plotting? Are plants able to do that? Where is Peter when I need him to answer a plant-related question?"

Probably home, indoors, avoiding creepy PDA plantlife.

"I work in a plant shop, ours don't do anything like this!"

"Yeah, I don't think they're supposed to?" Beau started trying to turn some of the mistletoe into paste with the butt of her staff. "This fucking island, man, I swear."

She smacked another couple of sprigs of mistletoe up into the air and got dinged in the back of her head for her trouble, stumbling forward another couple of steps.

"Ow, the fuck! Quit shoving me, you asshole plants! What do you even get out of this?"

"If this is supposed to encourage me to enjoy this strange winter holiday, it's not working," Fenris said. To the plants, yes.

One of them struck like a snake at his bare feet. He knew - knew - it didn't have a mouth. That didn't stop him from leaping back like a cat anyway.

His eyes narrowed and examined the plant-free area around them.

"I'm Fenris, by the way. If we're to be menaced by weeds - YES, I CALLED YOU A WEED. BECAUSE YOU ARE A PEST AND CRAWLING WHERE YOU DON'T BELONG - together, I feel I should at least make an introduction."

"I think they're parasites. Something about the coloring." More mistletoe tried to go for Beau's face and she managed to mostly duck out of the way, which might be a nice convenient distraction from a comment that might be construed as fairly intelligent. "Wait, Fenris? You're Fjord's friend, right? He mentioned you a few times."

She aimed a punch at the sprig that had gone for her face, and it flopped to the ground, momentarily stunned. Sadly, because it was a plant, the impact wasn't all that satisfying.

Fenris made a swipe at the mistletoe over Beau's head. Some of it fell to the ground, other strands had better self preservation and pulled out of the way.

He glanced at her. "Fjord is my roommate," he answered. After a beat, he added, "Friend. Sparring partner. Drinking buddy. Fjord's a lot of things."

"That clears up who I am. Who are you? Another friend of big, green and mopey?"

The mistletoe tried to take advantage of the situation. Fenris calmly chopped one of the vines into very small pieces.

". . . I mean, I know him," Beau said carefully, because 'friend' wasn't a word she was ready to say yet. "He's from my home. Kinda. Same world, same continent, different country. So like, we hadn't met until I ended up here, but it's kind of, you know, sometimes people have random things in common?"

She spun her staff around, batting several encroaching bits of mistletoe away.

"'m Beau, by the way."

Fenris frowned a little. It worried him, hearing that Beau was from Fjord's home world. He knew Fjord hadn't been treated very well by people there.

Fenris, being Fenris, commented on it. "You're not one of the idiots who holds his parentage against him, are you?" The tone of the question probably indicated what he thought of such people. As did the word 'idiots'.

The mistletoe struck again, causing another small hop backward and a furious bout of chopping.

“Yeah, look,” Beau said immediately, a sharper edge than usual to her voice, “I’m an asshole, right? But I’m not that kind of fuckin’ asshole.”

A whole bunch of mistletoe started to try and swarm her and she swept her staff around in a broad arc to try and knock it all back; a few got past her defenses, though, and she had to do some fancy footwork (well, she tried to make it fancy anyway) to keep it from knocking her over.

“If we have to back-to-back this shit so it doesn’t eat us,” she said, twisting to keep as much mistletoe as she could in her field of vision, “you’re not gonna like stab me in the back, right?”

She didn’t trust like that, sorry, Fenris.

That was more of a relief than he allowed to show. Fjord was getting stared at sometimes but not outright bigotry - not that he'd mentioned - here on this island. If Beau had been one of those people from his home world..

But she wasn't.

"Good," Fenris allowed, "If you were that kind of fuckin' asshole, I would make no promises about not stabbing you in the back. Or the front. Or cutting you in half. Fjord is my friend."

He eyed the mistletoe and chopped more of it into caterpillar-like pieces. "Since you're not, then yes, I promise not to stab you. We probably are going to have to go back-to-back and do a round-robin to keep this weed from tangling us. What the hell does it want?!"

"I don't know, but -- " Beau snarled and brought her staff down in a two handed overhead slam that would have been overkill if it had done more than clip a leaf off the mistletoe going for her knee. "It's being super fucking pushy and I kind of don't appreciate that."

She snorted, sounding vaguely if (unintentionally) dismissively amused. "You're that protective kind of friend, huh? That's cute. Like I thought those were an urban legend but okay."

"He is one of very few other non-humans on this island," Fenris answered wryly, not admitting that yes, he was that protective kind of friend. He was nothing if not loyal.

"You thought friends were an urban legend?" he prodded back, "Are you another who doesn't have many?" He knew that feel, Beau. People were kind of the worst.

A strand of vine went for his face. Fenris phased a hand, reached into it, and resolidified. The vine exploded into pulp around his fist. Then he began hacking at the rest of the vine with his sword.

Beau laughed, harsh and sarcastic. "Nah, I just don't believe in them." Which was a somewhat transparent lie. "Never had time for that shit, you know?"

Because yes, people were the worst.

"Dude, did you just --" This time she landed a good hit that took all the berries and most of the leaves off a particularly aggressive piece of mistletoe. "That was siiiiiiiiiiiiiick."

"I didn't either, for a long time," Fenris noted. He didn't tell her she was wrong, didn't imply that she'd change her mind. He was well aware of how awful people could be.

He threw her a confused look, "Did I just what? What's sick?"

Another vine went for his face. Or maybe his head. It didn't matter. The result was the same. Phase, grab it, solidify, squish. "Which part of 'do not fucking touch me' are you not understanding, weed?"

Weed. A deadly insult to plants.

He hoped.

"That thing you did with your hand," Beau clarified, currently using hers to backhand more mistletoe away from her face. "That was like, awesome. That was supposed to be a compliment. Did it -- it didn't sound like one, probably."

Because she was terrible at them. Terrible.

"I haven't heard 'sick' used as a compliment before, no," Fenris shook his head, "Different worlds, different slang, I guess."

He was filing it away to use sometime. Probably at the wrong time.

Fenris backed up another step. He swung and cut the vines down from the trees above him.

"The thing I did with my hand," he continued after a moment, "is due to the metal in my skin. It connects me to my world's.. dream..realm.. for lack of a better term. We call it the Fade."

"Oh, some mystical shit then. Got it," Beau said, nodding. "It's really badass. So is that sword, by the way."

If Fenris had been a woman, Beau would be useless and drooling by now, honestly.

"Mystical shit indeed," Fenris said wryly, "Sword also. Glad you like it."

He continued dicing up mistletoe with motions both fluid and graceful, which shouldn't have been possible with a sword that size, but screw physics.

"Were you another pirate like Big Green and Broody?"

He loved Fjord, truly.

Not yet, but that accidental career change would happen someday.

"Pfft." Beau clubbed some more mistletoe into temporary submission. "Never even saw the ocean before I showed up here. Ha, Big Green and Broody. I like that. I might steal it."

Fenris shot her a quick smirk, "Oh, do. He scowls too much for someone who goes around being nice to people all the time."

... compared to himself, anyway.

"Want to switch sides for awhile?"

"Uh." It took Beau a second to figure out what he meant. "Oh, gotcha. You go right, I go left?"

More mistletoe, a new contender this time, dive-bombed at her head from the trees.

"Seriously?"

What else could he have possibly meant?

Fenris nodded, "Yes."

He spun right and let his blade blur in a figure-8, hacking down more vines. Then he slashed them on the ground. One got too close and he kicked it so hard it splatted against a tree trunk and fell back to the ground stunned.

"Maybe they like your topknot," he suggested airily.

Why were they going for her head?

Because the universe was out to try and knock her unconscious as often as possible, that was why.

"Well, who wouldn't, right?" Beau smirked at him over her shoulder. "Gotta say it is a nice reminder that I could go for a haircut, though. Hey, hear that, you creeper plants? You did one useful thing!"

Just to emphasize this, she counted one for them. With her middle finger.

The mistletoe remained unimpressed, for the record.

"Not that I'm complaining about something to fight, but I mean, really?"

The mistletoe had no taste.

"It is giving me a chance to use my sword, now that it's not a peppermint stick," Fenris mused. While using the sword to good effect and pretending his last name was Cuisinart. "I don't think that counts as 'useful', though. I hardly need an excuse."

He glanced at Beau and then cut down another vine going for her head. "The lack of suitable things to fight on this island is its main negative point. We have to go to the mainland to get in so much as a decent insult exchange with anyone. But.. plants? Really?"

That was what he thought of that, anyway.

“Feels kind of like we’re getting the middle finger from the island,” Beau grumbled, and swatted away some trailing bits of mistletoe before they could flank Fenris. “Which — eh, I can kinda respect that.”

She was weird that way.

“Still, though, I’m not used to having to work that hard to find stuff with asses that need kicking. Are you?”

"Where I'm from, definitely not," Fenris said, "Between Darkspan, blood mages, slavers, and bandits, there's always something around that can use a good ass kicking. Since moving here?"

Mature, suave elf just blew a raspberry, Beau. A loud, wet, raspberry.

"Bored out of my mind."

Okay, most of those things on the list Beau could figure out, but. "The fuck are Darkspawn?"

She wasn't commenting on the raspberry, but she was smirking about it. Yes, even if she totally agreed with the sentiment.

"It's so peaceful." How did she manage to make that sound like such a bad thing? "Like. Too peaceful. Are we sure it's not a trap?"

"Races and people that've been infected by the Blight," Fenris answered. Then he made a face because he knew which question was coming next, "Mages of antiquity opened a way to the Fade and entered one of the realms in it. Then they did what they do best - corrupted it. We call it the Blight because that's what it does to everything and everyone it touches. The land can recover, with time, once the Darkspawn have all been put down. The people the Blight has warped, the only thing to do for them is kill them before they can infect others."

He took his momentary anger out on that mistletoe and a lot of it became far smaller bits just for being in front of him. It wasn't, technically, the only thing that could be done, but he wasn't going into what it took to become a Grey Warden.

Fenris agreed with both her tone and her question. "I'm not sure. I don't think Fjord is, either. We're here and we can't get home and things like this.." One hand left his hilt long enough to gesture rudely at the mistletoe, "..keep happening. Strange, but more or less banal. It's annoying, but it's still just a plant. No weapons, not even any teeth."

Said the guy who could just phase through it.

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The Park - Wednesday afternoon

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