Avatar of Bai Suzhen
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    1. Bai Suzhen 9 yrs ago

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8 yrs ago
Current Pretend I said something witty here
8 yrs ago
Sorry for being absent this week... brain is being slow

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Horror grew in Faridah's heart as she lisgtened to the President's address.

"No. No no no no, this can't be happening! I was free! I was finally going to do... anything! Aaaargh!" The walls of her simple shelter cracked, dust and gravel sliding out the damage. Faridah began pacing, talking to herself. "I just wanted a place... somewhere safe... I kept it small. I could've helped rebuild, but now..."

She collapsed, sitting on the ground, breathing heavily. "Fine. Fine, it's fine. I'm not letting them decide for me. I just have to go bigger. Stronger. Too much trouble to deal with." Faridah gripped the floor, hands going throuigh the concrete as though it were wet, squeezing hard.

In what appeared to be just another part of ruined city, the concrete trembled. Collapsed buildings slid across the ground, grinding massive scars into the road, exposed rebar twisting around other pieces almost like they were holding hands, then pulling tightly together. A patchwork quilt of stonework began to form walls, different shades of paint and raw stone pressed into each other, fused together, gravel and dust plugging the gaps.

What formed was a small castle. A boxy fort three floors tall with thick walls, narrow windows and metal doors that still showed traces of being parts of cars pressed and bent into shape.

Then the outer walls began growing, smooth, steep concrete with stairs on the inside and battlements along the top. The materiel came from the ground below, a ditch forming to make the wall even more impenetrable. There was no gate or bridge, Faridah wouldn't think to add those for some time.

Instead, the leftover car parts started to form furniture. Plastic chairs and tables, a bed with a polyester mattress, a fake leather sofa. The genuine leather and cotton remained where it lay, no matter how much Faridah glared at it. Eventually, she moved it manually into an empty room.

There was only one more thing her castle needed. She'd saved the rarer metals for it. Not that there was anywhere near enough. Gold, silver and platinum were supplemented with bronze and brass, forming into a simple, blocky and very functional throne.

Faridah sat down and waited. No going back now. People would see her castle, and she wouldn't move. Let them try.


"Jennifer. Miss Harrick to the kids. Food I'm craving... I think even if there wasn't a disaster, I'd have a hard time finding a good steak pie. I dunno why, America just doesn't seem to care for them."

She smiles at Amalia's little wink, not entirely sure what to read into it. "I'm not too bothered about the source, so long as you're not Sweeney Todd. If the ingredients snuck across the border or fell off the back of a lorry... better that it gets to people than just sits in a warehouse. You know there's places with a drinking water shortage? She begins gesturing as she talks. "It's because Nestle is the official government supplier and they can't meet the demand of the disaster, but made sure to include 'exceptional circumstances' exceptions in their half of the contract. So if anyone else supplies water in bulk, Nestle gets a massive payout..."

Jennifer takes a moment to collect herself. "Sorry, that was a rant... it's pretty stressful sometimes, but the school is a little bit of something normal. I'm a teacher back in England too, so I think it's helping me as much as the kids."

It's good to talk, to relax. There's a spark of something there as well, perhaps. "So, I'd ask for your number, but I don't have a phone right now. Or offer to get you a coffee, but same problem with money. If you come back after school, I'll give you a hand with your washing up, or baking the next batch?"


"Call me Mur'" she replies, keeping her cards close to her chest for now. "And you'd be right, but I'm going to wait and see exactly what the men in white coats are up to before I give too much away."

The crack of a miniature lightning bolt interrupts Muriel, and she turns her head, thinks for a moment, then slides off the table. "Then again, I may be able to help that girl a little. That's worth the G-Men learning some secrets."

She walks over to the crowd starting to form around Mara with a wave and a smile. "Heyo, what's happening, sorry to peep in. I just wanted to check something." She offers the sparking girl her hand. "Can you give me a zap? Just enough to make my hair stand on end. Fifty bucks says you can't do it."

She isn't actually sure if her rubber essence will make her immune to the electricity. She also isn't sure if she has fifty bucks. Well, if she's wrong, maybe Mara will accept a joint or two instead...

@Martian@LuckyBlackCat


An hour or so after Amalia saw the cute little girl leave, she sees her return. This time she's holding hands with Jennifer, leading a group of kids.
"OK kids, line up nicely, no pushing now. Liam, do I have to make you stand at the back? Remember to say please and thank you." she calls out to the class, keeping the kids as orderly as any group of kids expecting treats can be. Only when the whole class has something does she take a salad for herself, eating quickly but taking time to properly enjoy each large mouthful.

"Oh my god, this is amazing. I don't think I've had a lettuce that crunches since this whole mess started. Seriously, thank you, you're the best." she tells Amalia, shaking her hand and standing nearby to chat while watching the class and sometimes interrupting the conversation to deal with some rough play or nip an argument in the bud.

@AliceFalling


"Oh hey there. Yeah, everything's groovy. Just waiting to see what sort of event this is gonna be, you know?" Muriel responds with a bright smile and lazy wave, sitting cross-legged atop one of the picnic tables, rather than any of the benches.

Possibly seeing some of Arthur's impressions of her in his look, she continues "It's gonna be interesting to watch. Everything's all white-coats and stethoscopes right now, but if Plant Essences are like Animal Essences, then there's all sorts of things people have tried to commune with them. I think they might respond better to harmonious thoughts than prodding and jabbing, you know?"

@Martian


At the same time, in a FEMA camp located just outside San Francisco proper, the President's address was playing over a radio. There were people celebrating it, and there were people quietly concerned by it.

"Fucking hell." was Jennifer's response. Not for the first time, she wished the citywide destruction had spared the British embassy, so she had some way of getting travel papers, or even to claim asylum there. Her one attempt to try and explain her situation to an authority figure (Was he a cop? A soldier? Was there a difference right now?) had resulted in her being cuffed, placed in a 'Temporary holding cell' and a lot of talk of 'Illegal aliens'. She'd waited for the enforcer to be distracted, then turned into water and flowed to freedom, resolving not to try again until sanity returned. It seemed she'd be waiting some time.

In the meantime, Jennifer was keeping herself busy. She had three tasks her time was divided between. First, she'd made herself useful to locals with her knowlege of certain aspects of science.
"All that matters for this bit is that the water is cool. Doesn't need to be drinkable, so we can hijack the grey water pipes and it goes right back in again, just a little warmer so they won't even notice we're using it. Wrap the hose round this pipe, that's it, so it cools off the vapour. And that, mates, is a still."
This little improvement to the local black-market brewery had earned her some time with a smartphone. Signal and data were extremely limited, all she could really do was send her mother another 'Still alive, still stranded' email, and read the reply to her previous one promising that they were all trying their best to send help.

Secondly, she was using her skills as they were intended. A group of kids sitting on the ground listened as she used chalk and a wall to explain the structure of an atom. The lessons were more to keep the kids ocupied, give their parents a break and let them feel like some things were going back to normal, and the class was younger than she usually taught. The older kids had to grow up quick and help out at home. For this service, Jennifer was paid in supplies. A bit of food, a bottle of water, some old clothes, things people could spare. Which still wasn't much.

Jennifer's third and final job was as a scavenger. Or looter, depending on how generous you were feeling. Most scavengers went off with dust-masks (Which also helped hide one's face) and empty bags, sneaking into the fenced-off and poorly-guarded ruins to gather anything that looked useful. Store shelves were all picked clean, of course, but there were still treasures. Wires, pipes, firewood, all sorts of things had value.

All of which was a cover for what Jennifer really got up to. She snuck into the ruins, but made her way to a collapsed hotel, it's underground car park blocked off with tons of rubble it would take heavy construction equipment to shift. But an air duct was still clear. Making sure nobody was about, Jennifer stripped naked and hid her gear from other scavengers. Then she turned into mist, swept through the vent and emerged into her own private 'Batcave'.

Any self-respecting superhero would be ashamed to call it a lair, it's only gadget being an array of headlights hooked up to a car battery. Jennifer turned into phosphorus long enough to see as she switched it on, then began training. New elements, new shapes, faster transformations, everything she'd learned about her powers had come from sessions like these. Like learning she didn't need to breathe when she wasn't human. Not like solid granite had alveoli or mucous membranes after all.

A humanoid shape was optional too. Becoming mercury, she formed herself into a sphere, then became titanium and rolled in small circles. Where was the motion and momentum coming from? Another mystery.

She'd learned she could leave pieces of herself behind, a wet cement form patching up some cracks in the walls, but she felt hungry after doing it. Jennifer suspected that if she'd had access to scales, she'd find herself lighter afterwards.

And finally, she'd learned how to keep herself fed. After tossing chunks of masonry into a well-worn crated in the floor, Jennifer took her 'wrecking ball' form once more and began grinding it to powder. Then she became water and swirled, stirring and mixing it and herself into grey mud. Finally, she became human again. It tasted like a mouthful of dust, and her throat felt dry as a bone, but it would assimilate into the rest of herself and keep her 'fed'.

And then she'd leave the way she entered, once again make sure nobody was around as she reformed and redressed (Resolving once again to work out how to morph clothes) and scavenge enough to maintain her cover when she returned to the tents. Sometimes she spent a few days at a time in the ruins. It wasn't unusual not to see someone for a time, and people were secretive about where they lived. Tents weren't exactly hard to break into if someone wanted trouble.
A few days earlier, a woman arrived. She'd hitchiked most of the way there, walking in between and camping out wherever the day ended.

Not that there weren't complications, of course. Shoes were the first to be abandoned, heavy things that got caught on something, and then her feet came out like a cork. And when one's soles have the solidity of a pillow, they don't need protecting from pointed rocks. Next to go were her pants, which kept falling down every time she stretched taller and her waist got thinner.

It turned out there were lots of things Muriel didn't need any more. Even a conventional tent had been abandoned at a rest-stop with a 'Free' sign pinned to the packaging. It was just as easy to sleep in the treetops, drooped back and forth over a sturdy branch like an python.

Maybe it was something to do with the apparent plant-affinity she'd ended up with that nature was providing... then again, it was still far easier to acquire food and water in shops than the wilderness, so plant-bondings would only provide so much.

Eventually, however, Muriel reached the meeting spot, from behind. She was interested to see what was going on, but the last time she'd been called a 'Flower Child', Uncle Sam hadn't been taking names to send them all Christmas cards. Still, with room for three hundred, nobody was likely to notice an extra person, right? She just wouldn't tell people which cabin she was in, and they'd assume it was one that wasn't theirs.

All of which is why a seemingly-young woman wearing only a long t-shirt and a bikini, with local wildflowers in her hair and a fannypack of party drugs snuck into the campgrounds unregistered and arrived at the cabins from one of the wilderness trails.
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