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THE WEEK OF THE TRIFFIDS |

It's Jazz who notices that things aren't as they should be, a fact which he'd certainly try to parade around if he could speak. As it happens, he spots something amiss as Fortescue is on a morning walk into the city. Movement snakes at the corner of his green eyes, and he shifts on Fortescue's shoulders to watch it. She pays no mind, humming a bit of The Magic Flute; he watches birds in the same manner.

But she absolutely notices when a section of vine suddenly extends from a planter and wraps around her ankle, yanking her off of her feet. Jazz leaps to safety, snarling and hissing, keeping his distance as he was trained to do.

Fortescue, meanwhile, grits her teeth and taps into her pyromancy. Flames dance along her skin, avoiding her skin but not the vines that are trying to drag her bodily into the planter for... whatever the vines are attached to. She isn't too certain.

"Oh, just get off," she manages. The vines make a whining sound -- how on Earth or any other world do plants make sounds? -- and retreat, but not before a section of one burns off. Fortescue doesn't get up immediately, watching with narrowed eyes. "...just where did you..."

The thought is abandoned as two more sections of plant life suddenly lurch out, one around her right wrist and one around her other ankle. Fortescue's yanked a few more feet along before she huffs out an angry, "All right then," and ignites all of her body. This time, though it hurts the vines the same, the plant seems just as angry and sends out as many vines as she can burn. A deeper noise starts coming out of the planter, something bigger wriggling forward -- something which looks like a person-sized, yellow bulb.

THE THINGS FROM ANOTHER WORLD |

When she isn't being grabbed by enthusiastic greenery, and when other people aren't, Fortescue can be found in the library looking at cookbooks. She's curious about other things she could make which would be feasible for a beginning cook, and the library does have a good selection. Jazz lounges in the sun on the floor, often right in the way of other readers. Some of her experiments are done in the temple's kitchen as well as her own, and when they turn out well she sets them out in offering to those who still bunk down in the temple. She's experimenting with various pasta dishes, slowly amping up the difficulty.

She can also be found in the temple training rooms ever so often, dressed simply and taking out any excessive energy on a punching bag. Everything about her form and stance indicates a seasoned fighter. Jazz curls on the shoulders of a training dummy, and purrs smugly at anyone who approaches it and needs to use it.

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The moment she realized something funky was going on again, Ashley has been prowling around Teleios to see if she can figure out what's causing this and how to stop it. If she finds anyone who needs help... well, that's just a bonus. She's had to deal with a couple of them herself, but with her super-healing and super-strength, not to mention the deadly talons, the plants aren't much of a threat. Annoying, definitely, but she isn't worried.

This probably means she's not going to stay unharmed for long, but oh well.

Whatever the case, she comes up on Fortescue at a bad time. "Seriously? That's peachy." Peachy keen. Hurrying forward, she slices at the vines, letting her talons rip right through them. This doesn't really help much aside from make the vines angrier. Ashley just stares.

"You have got to be kidding."

While he's certainly no expert, Luke's managed to really improve his own cooking skills through simple necessity. After that, he started to enjoy it, especially when he gets to cook for someone else and especially when that someone is Fortescue. Doing things for her in general is something he likes to keep up.

Fortescue learning how to cook for herself does take away some opportunities Luke may have to impress her, but it also seems to open up new ones. For example, he can now teach her the tricks he's learned.

Or he can stand around and be an incredibly unhelpful troll. Pasta's quite easy, but there's a lot of waiting around for water to boil involved. During such a time, Luke leans with his elbows on a counter, watching, and tells Fortescue, "Don't burn the water."

It's rather difficult for him to hide the smirk at the corner of his mouth.

Wesley was tired of being attacked by plants, and had taken refuge in the library as well. He was trying to come up with a few recipes of his own, to surprise his mom, in thanks for being there for him. He was an amateur when it came to cooking, though, other than things like... well, haunches of meat, so he was looking for something simple.

Spotting her, and Jazz, when he was looking through the stacks, he gave a small smile and wave. "Afternoon."

This is most certainly in the annoying category. Fortescue twists around, wishing she'd remembered to bring her gauntlets. She sighs in relief when Ashley suddenly appears in the peripheral of her vision and clears up the problem. The immediate problem, at least.

A growling is coming from the bushes, from the pod-thing -- whatever it is.

"Thank you, love," she huffs, scrambling quickly to her feet. Her arms and legs are still ablaze. Jazz snarls at the vines as they start wriggling, clearly about to strike again. "I don't know what set this thing off, but it's really intent on trying to devour me. And I picked this morning to run out without my weapons, naturally."

Fortescue turns her head away from the water -- which now has bubbles gathering in it -- to glance at Luke. She's picked cacio e pepe from a cookbook she found in the library because it had sounded foolproof. Or extremely easy, at least. She could still burn things. She's good at that.

But water? Tsk, tsk.

"Really? Perhaps I will," she says playfully. She picks up the hefty block of parmesan on the chopping board and waves it at Luke, waggling a brow at him. "For that, you can grate this for me."

Fortescue has a hefty tome in her hands, a collection of Italian recipes which seem to be at her difficulty level as far as cooking is concerned. But some of the recipes can be a bit difficult to decipher. Perhaps it gets easier, the more time you have to stare at them.

She glances up from the old, aromatic pages and smiles back at Wesley. Jazz purrs away in his pane of sunlight on the floor.

"Good afternoon. Looking for a recipe?"

Most people, she's noticed, aren't in this section of the library.

"Yes. Completely lost, but looking." Wesley offered her a smile, if a shy one, thinking she was cute in a way, and promptly stumbled over one foot while distracted, only to manage to plant face-first into the bookshelf he was in front of.

Wesley straightened up, facepalmed, gently, and sighed. Yep. That was his luck.

"Just, ah, something simple."

By now, Neria's come to expect this sort of thing, and she comes prepared. On the lookout for people in trouble, she picks up the sounds of a struggle and rushes around the corner, skidding to a stop by Fortescue's side. The flames actually don't surprise her, and if anything, her look towards them is filled with longing. Her magic is something she hasn't asked to have returned yet. There were more important things...

But right now, she'll do what she can to help this mage since even her fire doesn't seem to be stopping the vines. Whipping out a dagger, she slices through vines as quickly as they reach out.

"Can you get to your feet before more grab you?" she asks hurriedly, attacking each new tendril that snakes out. She also sees the bulb in the middle, and whatever it is, she's prepared to stab it if need be.

Politely, she simply gives him a sympathetic look when he faceplants into the bookshelf -- rather than smile or chuckle. Fortescue's known quite a few clumsy people, and Luke can be clumsy when he's preoccupied.

"Are you all right?" Fortescue nods at the thick book in her arms. Good thing the new kitchen is big. It wouldn't have fit on the old counter at the homestead, she's sure. "That's exactly what I'm here for. I thought I'd try some Italian cooking."

Perhaps, when she gets better, she can approach French recipes.

"I'm rubbish," she adds. "I used to burn everything as a child."

Fortescue feels some admitted relief when Neria doesn't react to the flames licking up and down her legs and arms. This would be a poor time indeed to surprise someone who hadn't come from a world with magic. Many, many people in Teleios hadn't seen magic before they arrived. She's startled more than a few simply by discussing it casually.

"Trying," she says briefly, gritting her teeth in frustration. Not at Neria. In fact, she gets out a quick, "Thank you!"

With the two of them working on the vines, she's able to scramble to her feet and back up. Now if the vines want to get to her, they'll have to be determined; they've lost the element of surprise.

"They managed to get me when I wasn't paying attention," she admits, the flames on her legs growing more intense.

Once Fortescue is on her feet, Neria springs back on her own, dagger still held out, ready to defend herself.

"That tends to be the way of things," she says absently, before backing up quickly as the vines prepare for another attack. "Think they can get through doors?"

"Agh, yes, just my dignity hurt." He smiled a little, then nodded.

"I just want... anything. I mostly used advanced tech to make my food, then learned real low tech, as in fire pits, and nothing inbetween." He shook his head.

"I just want to make a few things." He peered at the shelves, taking down a book. "Now if I can find something simple, and get the ingredients, maybe I can cook it without burning down the house."

Lifting her hands, Ashley moves into position at Fortescue's back, just in case something gets the bright idea to try to back attack one of them. She flexes her fingers, clawing the air like a cat.

"Yeah this is kinda happening all over," she admits. "Not sure why. Where are your weapons right now?"

Luke's smirk becomes a grin when Fortescue turns to give him that look. When she waves the parmesan at him, though, he just tucks his chin into the palm of one hand.

"But then you'd miss out on the cheese-grating experience. That's a very important part of learning how to cook. You won't learn if I do it for you." He raises his eyebrows, as if indicating that he has a very good point.

And it is a good point, but Luke's mostly just giving her a hard time. He picks up the cheese grater by its handle with his free hand and idly plays with it, taunting her.

Eyeing the vines as they twitch in the other brush, she shrugs her shoulders and tries to imagine what one of them might do to a door.

"I doubt it," Fortescue hazards. "Unless they know how to wiggle the handles."

Around here, one never really knows about these things. For all she knows, the extra-handsy plant is an unpleasant newcomer to Teleios. That would be a terrible bit of luck. More than likely, however, this is just like when Teleios was invaded by creatures. Mass chaos with some sort of agent cause.

Because that's usually what it boils down to. Agents.

"Shall we try one?"

Fortescue grins, thumbing over a recipe which sounds delicious but has several large paragraphs worth of instructions. She can work up to that, perhaps. For now, she needs something simple. Something to help build up her confidence.

"That's the goal, isn't it? Cooking without causing a disaster." She eyes the next recipe. "Or something that ends so terribly that someone else has to cook dinner."

Though she loves it when Luke cooks for her, she'd rather not scar their new kitchen.

"Glad to hear it isn't just me with a handsy plant," Fortescue says, sighing as she gathers her hands in front of her. She half-balls her fingers together and the flames grow hotter and hotter. The next vine that lashes out for her is going to have an unfortunate end.

Or perhaps it would be better if it were just her and one plant...

"My weapons are back at the house. But fire should work just fine," she says thoughtfully. "Now that I know to use it."

And assuming that she's careful with it and doesn't light anything else on fire.

She lets out a tiny, exaggerated huff of air, one hand on a hip as she glances at the wiggling cheese grater. Part of her just wants to let out a snort of laughter and tackle him, but the rest of her holds on.

There's time for that later, after all.

"I've grated cheese before. That's one of the things mum would trust me with, since there was no heat involved," Fortescue scoffs, mostly for the effect of this teasing exchange they're in. Smirking, she holds out her hand for the grater. "If you're just going to stand there and look handsome, I'll ask for posing. It's the least you can do."

"Or if they can fit under it. But that bottlenecks them anyway." Neria gives a brief nod. "Let's." By now she has a few contingency plans in place for most of the strange things Teleios throws at them. While retreating indoors is a danger if whatever is attacking can follow, if there's a back door or window to escape out of, it's worth trying just to see if the enemy can follow or not.

"Posing? What kind of posing?" he asks warily despite grinning, suddenly holding the cheese grater closer to him. He doesn't want to give it up if posing is the alternative.

The truth is, he knows exactly what kind of posing Fortescue wants. He's just trying to buy himself some time. The very idea makes his cheeks go pink and he's already telling himself that it's just not happening.

"Exactly that." He peered at a recipe that had words in it he didn't even know how to pronounce, and sighed, flipping to another, and then another. "Which might be harder than I thought."

He chuckled. "I wonder if there are cooking classes here." He could definitely stand to learn, for sure.

Ashley eyes the fire with mild wariness. She remembers the one time she got set on fire. Hilariously enough, her mom was the one who released the fire elemental, but Helen had done it to stop the Cabal Super-Abnormals and Ashley was just one of them. So Ashley can't blame her mom; it made sense and stopped them cold without killing them.

Or it actually stopped them hot but oh well.

"Can you set me on fire like that?" she asks cautiously, an idea forming. Not her best, but on the plus side, she's pretty sure that whatever Fortescue is doing can't be worse than a fire elemental.

She grins. "I like your thinking."

This isn't a convenient location for this plan of theirs, but there is a small shop nearby that doesn't seem to be remotely busy. Too early in the day, perhaps. It also appears empty -- perhaps its owner has left Teleios. Fortescue immediately starts in that direction, but she goes at a trot rather than a lunge just to see if that makes a difference as far as veins reaching out to her goes.

Judging from the ssss sounds behind her, she gathers they're having just as much luck tracking her movement as they were before.

"In here!"

Fortescue continues to smirk at him, her eyes glittering and just as mischievous as the rest of her expression as she gets some butter out of the fridge.

"Oh, you know. Entertaining poses." She may, or may not, be working up to what he's dreading. It's hard to tell, with that face of hers. "Like stage performers finishing an act. Voila!" Lifting her arms briefly skyward, she gives a demonstration. "Or clothing catalogue models, pretending to be casual and just being strange."

Her arms at her sides again, she displays the pose of someone laughing at a vaguely funny joke they'd just heard at a party.

Hmming softly, she approaches Wesley and turns to a specific page in her tome. It may be an unwieldy sort of book, but at least it's easy for two people to look at it. This is a recipe she's tried recently, and it turned out decently enough. Then again, it's easy enough as far as pasta is concerned.

"This is cacio e pepe," she explains. "It's the epitome of warm, delicious comfort food, I think. Not too difficult, either. Just cooking pasta and then folding it into butter and cheese. Something for you to consider?"

She nods wryly.

"If there were cooking classes around here, I'd sign up in an instant. That sounds like a fun use of Teleios time, both for the teacher and the students."

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