Aside from the routine exercises and training that they regularly underwent, Angeline found herself being useful in more… Mundane areas of Goodnight. One time, as people took to the outdoors occasionally for comfort, or training purposes, an idea came to her as she was honing her skills. She quickly took to the kitchen to ask about any sort of garden, to which she was delighted to hear they had a small garden but with very little variety of vegetables, working with what little they had brought to goodnight or scavenged on missions. 

Angeline spent most of her free-time from then onwards volunteering in the meagre garden, she sat and grew and experimented with what she could do. At least this way she was helping. She could grow out-of-season plants quicker, although she had to be careful as it made her quite weak. With the toll it took on her, she was only capable of working on one small patch of crops, be it potatoes, carrots, onions, herbs, per day. Each day she cycled to a different patch of crops, slowly improving their rate of growth. After two weeks, she noticed herself feeling weak and feverish. It didn’t sit right with her to take any ‘sick days’, however, since the consequences would affect many others' quality of life. However, after a few more days of continuing to work on the small garden, her condition only worsened. It was then she was able to put two and two together that it was her doing this work that was deteriorating her condition in the first place. After a brief discussion with the kitchen staff, she excused herself from volunteering.

The first few days of her illness, the cold hit her hard. She spent as much time as possible in their sleeping quarters, trying to stay hydrated and had just enough energy to go to the food court daily to keep herself as well-fed as she could possibly be in the current conditions. She had to continue both the magic and the physical training, both of which she found particularly difficult in her condition, though she was eager to put as much effort as possible, she didn’t want to lose any of the strength she had from before. During the recovery periods of magic training sessions she was checked upon by supervisors and medics to see how her recovery was coming along, which it was, slowly but surely. After the first few days the majority of the hard-hitting symptoms had faded off and now she was merely dealing with lingering inconvenient symptoms, a lasting sore throat, headaches, a cough and other small symptoms of the sort. This made training significantly easier and by the time the meeting was called, she was feeling almost totally better, with only the lingering sore throat and the occasional headache.

She stood and listened to people’s contributions to the plan, noting holes in them that she could patch up when it came her turn to speak. Before she spoke she glanced around the room, ensuring no one else had anything to say.

“Alright. So I’ve had a decent look at this floor plan while you guys were talking and Ellen, your idea is pretty good. One thing I want to point out, though, is that if the security is situated anywhere it’ll probably be here-” She pointed at the ‘main office’ section of the layout “-which is the total other side of the store from the truck bay entrance. So I suggest we try to get someone in through the main entrance or exits, or maybe, if we do have someone hiding in the store after hours, they could look along the side wall where the offices are for entry later. I mean one suggestion is having someone open a window in the bathroom if there is one as long as it isn’t locked or anything, you know?” She pointed at the bathrooms which were just above the main office.

“My other suggestion sort of builds on Ellen’s plan, I think everyone should have a planned route in the store we take, and we should have a ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ objective, primary being important stuff, and the secondary is just add-on nice things we could take on the way back to the truck loading bay based on our routes.”

She stared at the map for a while longer, tracing routes with her fingers, with her body arched over the table to read the finer prints. “So… Whoever deals with security in the main office can go to the pharmacy as their primary objective, and then these aisles here-” She points at the aisles 300-319 “Can be scoured as a secondary objective. Maybe prioritise vitamins? Then someone else can have ‘preserved goods’ as their primary, in these similar aisles, 305: jerky and crackers, 307: Nuts- you know what, actually skip 307, scoop the nuts off the aisle caps at 306/307 and 308/309 then dive right in aisle 309 for soup, noodles, rice and then up to the canned goods. Definitely take carts if you can cause this stuff is going to be heavy and we can’t risk being bogged down. As a secondary objective potentially the coolers #1 and #2 depending on what they have when we scope out the store during the day, or cereal, tea or coffee for just general quality of life.”

“For the people going down to get fresh foods down here, going to aisle 105 would be good, dental hygiene n whatnot, we only have one set of teeth and I don’t see many dentists kicking about. Also stopping here at aisle 110 for blankets could be good too. But obviously it should be only if things are going well. I imagine this place is going to be patrolled and we’ll have some resistance, it’s not going to be a smooth ride. The fresh foods, meats etc should be the main gathering, but grabbing one box of toothpaste or floss is better than none at all. I imagine we should have two people on the foods, so maybe if the first person starts from the top going down and the other starts and the fruit and vegetables and go up, once you meet in the middle, if you have time one goes to one aisle and the other goes to the other or something like that?”

“Anyways… My last points are: here right at the entrance to the truck loading area are cleaning items, probably aisle 403. Grabbing a few tubs of bleach could be great for preventing disease spread and keeping things clean and toilet paper here too. Just last minute items we can throw on if needed. Finally, here-” She stabbed her finger at the top right-hand corner of the page. “Gas station. I’m not sure what the need is at the moment for fuel but that’s an option we could consider.”

“How many people is that… 1 on meds, 2 on fresh food, 2 on preserved food.. That’s 5. How many people are coming with us? Uh… Anyways I know my plan is a bit over the top but it’s better to have a defined set of goals you want to achieve and then underachieve them than not know what else to grab if we have more time than we thought we would.” Angeline looked to Audrey for answers, and also tossed her gaze to Ellen, with a sort of ‘I can do this too’ look. She wasn’t stupid, nor totally incapable. Just… In high stress situations she wasn’t going to be very strategy minded as it simply isn’t in her nature to be as such.